Sorceress of Shadows
by frankannestein
Summary: Ephemeros, a land created and connected by the dreams of people from other worlds, though now threatened by nightmares. When people cross the borders into dreams, they are known as aliens, and some can control magical Ephemeral Cards. Only the Card Masters can save Ephemeros - or so the shadowy creature that called itself Anhell told Jace when it took her from her world.
1. Prelude

_**In Dream World in its entirety ©Jae-Ho Yoon, English Text **__**TokyoPop**_

* * *

Gray clouds bunched into a plush cushion that blanketed the two-lane road. The air cooled enough to raise goosebumps along Jace's arms despite her hoodie. The sunlight of the morning faded from memory like a lost child of happier days.

**Saturday, US Highway 285 South . . .**

Following Rob's bright red taillight higher up the mountain pass, Jace leaned into a sharp turn. Her sportbike hummed, apparently reveling, as she usually did, in the workout of a winding road. The day darkened, bringing the musty smell of damp on the wind that whistled around her helmet. The helmet was the only bit of gear that might protect her from the weather; her jacket and chaps rode snug, rolled up, and useless in the space beneath her seat.

She tried to signal to her boyfriend to pull over, but he did not acknowledge her. A year ago, Rob would have initiated a break so they could don bad weather gear. He would have fallen back and made sure she didn't lose control of her bike on one of the loose gravel pullouts. He might even have sneaked a kiss or two before insisting she put her helmet back on.

He would not have revved the engine, sped up, and vanished around the next curve.

The mountainside obscured him and his reptile-green bike. Jace downshifted and twisted the throttle. Her bike raced out of the turn, its tires flirting with the wrong side of the double yellow lines. She loved to ride fast, but not when the sky threatened to dump half an ocean on her, like right then. The wind picked up. With a weak rumble of distant thunder, it began to rain.

"Rob!" Jace shouted. Her helmet trapped the sound of her voice, briefly steaming up her visor. Rain splattered the other side. Her lightweight hoodie offered minimal protection, her jeans none at all. Rob had to be getting just as wet, but he didn't slow.

He was still angry with her, then. Jace flinched under the marbles-falling-down-stairs rattle of cold, high-country rain. Choosing to keep up rather than give Rob bragging rights at the next dive, Jace fed the bike more fuel and watched the needle of her speedometer inch past one-ten. One-fifteen.

One-twenty, and Rob entered a turn a full thirty seconds before she did. He pulled so far ahead that she lost sight of him around successive curves. She didn't care. The icy downpour had washed all the fun out of the ride and all the warmth from her heart.

Rob should end their relationship if he no longer felt anything for her, Jace thought gloomily. He was a coward for not doing it.

Darkness descended, faster and thicker than she had ever seen. It seemed to crawl into the corners of her eyes. She glanced in her mirrors. Shadows danced there, too, made deeper by the frost-bright headlights of the cars behind her. Cold light. Cold rain. Cold shadows.

Jace frowned. When she blinked, the shadows fled, a trick of the weather. She should break things off with Rob herself, right now. He wouldn't even notice. He'd raced off and left her on rides before, a total jerk move that he popped out like biscuits from a can whenever they fought; once he'd had enough of riding or the rain, he'd head for home, expecting her to make her way alone. If she turned around right now, she'd beat him there. Then she could pack some of her things and be gone before he got back.

Yeah. That would be best.

Decision made, Jace set her sights on the next exit ramp, her thumb sliding toward her turn signal. She was sick of taking the blame for Rob's problems. Such as his increasingly loud threats that one of them would have to get a second job to make ends meet when he was the one racking up three-hundred-dollar bar tabs every week. Or his complaints about her lack of housekeeping, when he was the slob junking up their apartment. Or, which hurt most of all, his anger over her refusal to give him a blowjob before he signed online for a night of gaming rather than a night of play with her. She'd made that mistake too often lately, and hated how he pushed her aside without reciprocating. Unwanted. Undesirable. Unworthy of the same good feelings he thought were a right.

Enough. She'd had enough.

All of these thoughts coalesced in a flash. Jace had been thinking them for weeks, though they'd been unconnected and confused by leftover feelings for Rob. She'd been thinking them ever since that stupid fight they'd had about blonde-haired, blue-eyed, flirty-hipped, beer-swigging, sports-fan Nikki, and how much time Rob spent with her, at work, the gym, the bar, while he expected his girlfriend, Jace, to stay home and clean up after him . . .

Unaware of her thoughts, Rob shot past the exit she planned to take, and then decided the little electric in front of him wasn't going fast enough. He pulled his bike hard left at the start of a blind curve, nearly touching the asphalt with his knee, and whipped across the double yellow lines in a swirl of rain.

Shadows gushed from the cracks in the road. They bubbled like lava in the dark, steaming like fresh tar. A horn blared – not from the small electric, but from an eighteen-wheeler. The urgent, deep-throated sound throbbed in Jace's ears, her bones, her belly. Rob had no time, no space, in which to react. His sportbike collided with the semi's front grille.

Metal and plastic crumpled. Fluid, some clear, some not, sprayed into the air. It sounded like an entire zoo screaming.

Horror froze Jace in place. What had she seen? Where was Rob? It had happened too fast to comprehend. She couldn't make sense of it.

Rob wasn't dead. He couldn't be. She'd never known anyone who had died.

She had to be dreaming. Please, someone, tell her she was dreaming!

The rain pounded the road. The shadows absorbed it, opening holes into nothing. The mountain shouldered its way into Jace's path, and the exit sailed by. The road twisted to the right. The electric car blended with the renewed gloom, speeding now, seeking safety.

The semi was still coming. Some of its tires jumped over the wreckage of the reptile-green bike, others caught and skidded. The big truck swerved right and then jackknifed left, blocking both lanes. The horn howled like a terrified animal.

Jace, like Rob, had nowhere to go. Time slowed to an eternity between each breath and made a prisoner of her. The messy, rain-washed grille bore down on her, fitted with a chrome frame of snarling fangs. In slow motion, she yanked her handlebars and felt the bike fishtail sickeningly beneath her. At this speed, the thin film of rainwater on the road formed a slick barrier between the asphalt and her tires. Lights smeared. Shadows crested like ocean waves.

The bike gave a nasty wobble, hesitated, and then toppled, taking Jace with it. She slid over the rain and the road, her left leg trapped by the sputtering machine.

Her jeans and her sweatshirt shredded, as did her skin, so that her blood flowed hot. Her helmet bounced along the asphalt, knocking black and red kaleidoscopic flecks into her sight.

She barely saw the tilting trailer of the semi swing over her, tires juddering, brakes smoking. It passed like a cloud racing across the sun. Jace, dragged by her bike, shot out the other side, impacted the guardrail, and flipped over it.

She was falling. The cliffside rushed by the way the road had rushed beneath her wheels.

The shadows poured over the edge of the cliff. They streamed downward like hands reaching to catch her, or like the teeth of the semi's grille frame closing around a tasty snack. Was she hallucinating?

_Please let me pass out,_ she begged. _It hurts so much. I'm scared._

_I don't want to die._

She was hallucinating. She had to be. There were _things_ in the shadows.

As though in answer to her desperate plea, they coalesced out of the unnatural darkness. Pale things like ghosts with black pits for eyes. Purple things like smoke with starlight for eyes. Childlike, big-headed, winged things with skin of ebony. Tiny fluttering bat-things. Small lumpy things, each lump encasing a golf ball-sized gem that pulsed like an LED. The things smiled at her. As if in recognition. As if in welcome.

One figure, larger than the rest, hurt her eyes, sable on obsidian, forcefully sucking the last of the light. It felt like a silhouette of something that could be human, helmed, armored, and winged, though it was the size of a building. It appeared below Jace as she fell and fell and fell.

The cloak spread like squid ink in water and the wings unfurled, while a deeper blackness yawned in the silhouette's center. Jace, swooning from the intense pain in her leg, imagined a black hole. She was going to disappear into it. Disappear forever. Is this what death felt like?

A voice of soft twilight and blue-gray clouds sighed out of the silhouette, while Jace's shell-shocked brain tried to classify it as _man._

_I am Anhell,_ it said. _Pleased to meet you, young master._

"Young what? What are you? What do you want?" she moaned. She had to force the words out, to consciously think about forming them with her numb lips and tongue. It was like speaking through the paralysis of sleep. She couldn't see anything except the dark mass of things, growing fainter by the second as blackness took over.

_You can save Ephemeros,_ the voice said. It floated to her through the nothing, soft as willow withies draped in moonlit water. _I ask your forgiveness in advance._

_ For myself, and for –_

* * *

_**A/N: **__Uh, oh, Anne's at it again. I have lots of old stories rattling around in my head, some that I have started here on the site and then later pulled, and others that I have posted but haven't yet finished. Someday, I hope to finish them all and share them with you. But for now, here's something new and silly! Something that I don't care quite so desperately about as I do "The ThunderCats." If you've come this far, I am so glad you did!_

_So, "In Dream World" is one of the silliest things I've ever read, in a good, unrestrained, sexy way (the main character is horribly misogynistic compared to my American values, but he's likeable anyway, and the barely-contained sex appeal of the girls surrounding him is hilarious). I know I'm not the only fantasy-lover who secretly likes the Character From Our World trope, and that's exactly what "In Dream World" promises . . . but doesn't really deliver. So, I took that idea and ran with it (I'm so sorry, Jae-Ho Yoon!). I've added my OC, Jace, and will loosely follow the original storyline. For anyone familiar with it, you'll see what I've done differently RIGHT AWAY, from name changes to fleshing out the world. I don't believe you need to be a fan of the series to read my story. I truly hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have writing it!_

_Please review! I hope to receive comments of all kinds - good, bad, and indifferent. I want to know what you think, and I am always open to constructive criticism. :3 Without you guys, I would have no reason to write!_

_All my love,_

_Anne_


	2. Stage One

He woke right before she hit the ground.

**Dawn, Southern Craglands . . .**

"Not again," Asher groaned. "What is going on?"

He sat up and clapped a cold hand to his clammy forehead. This was the third time! He pressed the heel of his hand into one eye, trying to push the images of that strange, dark, wet, and machine-filled world out of his mind. With his other eye, he blinked furiously at the headman's poorly-patched tent walls. Wild, fern-green pimki birds chattered as they explored the barrels and bamboo canteens propped in the coolest corner, their long tails kicking up fans of silver and gold sand. The oil lantern depending from the main pole was shuttered, though Asher could make out the hand-woven charms of protection hanging in concentric circles from the support poles. He scooted backward, toward the tent wall and the concealing sacks and tubes of supplies, his ears alert for any sound of distress outside.

Condensed sunlight shimmered inside the tent, prompting a drop of sweat to roll down his temple. Slowly, he relaxed. A morning in the Craglands was too hot for blankets. The complete opposite of his dream.

Her dream. Whatever.

She must have survived the accident. Which meant she was an alien in this world, just like him. An alien, dreaming of the day she'd dropped into Ephemeros. Now he was sharing her dream.

He was damn sick of it.

"Firelord! How was your sleep?" the headman called in his sand-roughened voice. He ducked into the tent, shooing away the pimkies, who chirped at him and continued savaging the canteens with their small, curved beaks, seeking a drink.

The headman's sandals stopped at the edge of the threadbare sleeping rug, and then he burst into laughter. "Ha! Maybe you didn't get much sleep after all!"

Asher looked down at his lap. A linen sheet was bunched up over his left leg, which ached with the memory of that girl's dream. Then the sheet moved.

Appalled, he whipped it off. The empty jug of metheglin he'd swiped from supper the night before tipped over and sent two cups tumbling into the sand. Still dead to the world, Keon-hee scrunched up her face in the sudden light and then wiggled closer, rubbing her cheek and one dimpled hand into his thigh.

"Mmm," she mumbled. She squeezed with her small fingers, which inched dangerously upward. Her brows furrowed. "Sang-eo, you lost weight . . ."

Asher stared at her for two seconds. He should have known better than to let a kid of sixteen drink, but once she'd tasted the spiced, fermented honey, he hadn't been able to stop her. Moreover, judging by the shadows flitting across her sweaty face, the way she whimpered and hunched closer, he suspected this newest alien had gotten into Keon-hee's dreams, too. Which meant that, like he and his – for lack of a better word – partner, the other alien was a Card Master as well.

Still.

"I don't care if you _are_ dreaming!" Asher yelled. He balled up a fist and whacked her blue-haired head. "Watch where you put your hands!"

"Ouch!" Keon-hee rolled off him at once, clutching her boyishly short hair.

Asher leaped to his feet, fist raised, ready to whack her again if she tried to grab him.

"Ah, I know how it is with young people," the headman wheezed, smirking all over his swarthy face so that his eyes closed to dark crescents. He leaned on his walking stick in the posture of one of the watch guards, which let them stand for hours without getting tired.

"Shut up, old man," Asher snapped, not in the mood to fend off the suppositions of a dirty-minded human.

The headman opened one eye a slit, his smile hardening as he studied Asher, who wasn't about to apologize, at Asher's obvious alienness, the spiky, dark orange hair, the long, pointed ears, the cracked and stained dragon's claw he wore on a thong around his neck. They sized each other up, and then the headman sighed through his smile, friendly again. "Well, we do owe you a great debt, Firelord. The two of you worked hard last night."

He hobbled over to the tent opening and held up the flap, gesturing for the taller man to precede him into camp. Asher glanced at Keon-hee, who had found her strange bag, the sandpaper-skinned fish she called Sang-eo, snuggled up with it like it was a toy, and –

"I don't believe it," Asher muttered under his breath. "The kid went back to sleep."

Sang-eo gnashed its serrated teeth a little in its sleep. Keon-hee gave a slight snore through pursed lips. Her sleep seemed more peaceful than before. Asher shrugged and went out.

The smell hit him hard, but he made no sign of it except by stuffing his hands in his jeans' pockets. He followed the headman past the pile of dead nightmares, to which the night watch was beginning to set fire. The women of the caravan must have finished their looting of the carcasses, then. Good. Maybe they'd gathered enough to pay his and Keon-hee's fee for taking care of the problem in the first place.

Asher and the headman rounded another of the patched, red-walled tents. Caravaners sat around small fires, breakfasting on slightly sweet rolls of dark grain, tiny salted lizard fillets, and tough-skinned fruit gathered at the last oasis. They drank mugs of hot but thin xocoatl, for which Keon-hee hadn't developed a taste, though Asher thought it acceptable. It was similar to a drink the dragon-kin brewed, a dark, muddy beverage they called qahwa. Keon-hee had admitted that the xocoatl's bitterness reminded her of the seaweed crackers her people, the sea-dwelling haenyeo, made, but she wouldn't drink anything but water. Usually. He made a mental note to keep her away from the booze.

"We just got word of another village of death to the east," the headman said. His gray hair protruded from beneath a skullcap the same red as the tents, from his ears, and from his jaw. He turned to Asher, worry etching the lines of his face deeper. "The nightmares are gaining power. I fear for the future of Ephemeros."

A small breeze plucked curiously at the headman's loose clothing and cloak, the rips and tears in Asher's blue denim jacket and jeans. Two of the watch were arguing over a carcass that had flopped out of the burning pile of nightmares. It looked like a lizard-headed human turned inside out, its bones forming a cage to contain bled-out muscle and sinew. Most nightmares were humanoid and horrible, even when dead. Apparently, neither man wanted to touch it to put it back on the fire. Asher rolled his eyes.

"Save your breath, old man," he said. He ignored the headman's startled look. "I'm an alien, remember? I couldn't care less how many villages the nightmares destroy."

Disappointment and anger darkened the headman's swarthy face. He turned away, eyes closed, unwilling to soil his gaze with an alien any longer. "Very well, then. Joree! Give him his pay."

A timid young man scampered up, the expected bag of coin in his hands. Asher took it and bared his fangs in a grin when Joree scampered away again, nervous as a desert rabbit. These people, the natives of Ephemeros, had made it very clear from the beginning that aliens didn't rate any better than nightmares in their lives. Best not let the natives forget it, not after they'd left him to die when he'd dropped in, injured, alone, confused, and frantic to get back home.

There was no way home. He'd accepted that. However, their world, Ephemeros, would never become home, not for him. No use getting attached.

"I don't like that guy," one of the pair who had left the carcass lying where it was as if hoping the hard, white sun would take care of the job for them, loudly said. "I don't trust him to guard the caravan."

"Quiet, soldier," the headman snapped. Asher raised an eyebrow at his tone. "Anyone who has the ability to use Cards is worth every penny. These aliens have unique advantages over nightmares."

He glared at Asher and then his soldiers. "Keep your reservations to yourselves."

Well. Not every native was a waste of skin, Asher supposed.

The soldiers made faces at him with their silly blunt teeth. Bored, Asher turned away, the gold satisfyingly heavy in his hand, to collect his seabag and partner. Time to move on.

Except one of the women screamed and dropped a jug of xocoatl on the rocky ground. It smashed, splashing hot liquid everywhere. More women screamed, frightening the children, who fled like cattle when the wyvern was loose. Small bodies bumped into Asher, spinning him around.

The untended carcass was moving.

The watch gave shouts of warning. "A nightmare! Alive! Take cover, Headman!"

While the men tried to shuffle their resisting leader to safety, the nightmare stood. It yanked the head of a spear out of its back and stretched to its full, nine-foot height, joints cracking. Gore-smeared horns winked wickedly in the dawn and firelight. The tooth-filled jaw dropped open, releasing bloody steam. The feral eyes narrowed, fixed with hate on Asher.

The jaws widened. A pointed, bird-like tongue thrashed in the cavity. The nightmare screeched.

It sounded like the two machines colliding in the dream.

Asher shook off the chill of someone else's terror. Let nightmares frighten the natives. He was dragon-kin. He kicked open a crate, snatched out a melon-sized grenade, and then wedged it in the monster's snarling mouth. Contemptuously, for the humans and for the monster, he said, "Go back to sleep, nightmare."

The nightmare convulsed like a housecat with its head stuck in a bag, as if it didn't know, or couldn't remember, that it possessed hands. Asher plucked the pin from the grenade, and then he and the caravaners sprinted for cover. Some got blown flat to the sand, all got splattered with viscera, when the grenade exploded.

The fire crackled and spat. Left and right, the caravaners, the watch, and the headman picked themselves up and brushed themselves off. Cursing under his breath, Asher flicked bits of gravel out of a cut on his elbow. Frightened sobs issued from the red tents.

"Wh-what do you think you're doing?" the fellow named Joree spluttered. "Y-you can't j-j-just –"

"Hmm?" Asher, intent on a particularly large bit of grit, wasn't paying attention.

"Those munitions are for repelling a full-scale attack!" a watch guard shouted. He shoved Joree aside, marched up to Asher, stood toe to toe with him, and puffed up his chest. Asher looked up at him coolly, which caused a large, purple vein to throb unpleasantly across his forehead. "They must be signed for – rationed – good gods, man, there are procedures! You can't waste them on a single enemy!"

"Use them. All. Now," Asher said. He drew his saber and pointed it at the burning mound, which bubbled like a pot of stew on the boil; the nightmare corpses were reanimating. Their shiver-inducing screeches rose above the snapping of flames. "Nightmares feed on fear. This entire camp reeks of it. Blow up the whole pile, now, before you're adding the bodies of your family to the pyre."

As he spoke, one of the nightmares, its back and shoulders bristling with broken arrow shafts, ripped a battle-ax out of a feebly-stirring neighbor and hurled it. Asher and the soldiers scattered.

Sensing that the resistance had broken down, the other nightmares, stumbling and shambling like the walking dead they were, rushed out of the flames and made for the red tents and the helpless women and children hiding inside.

Asher readied his saber, but the nightmare who had thrown the ax jumped over his head. In two large bounds, it reached the camp perimeter.

"Damn!" Asher snarled. If not stopped, it would seek out the nearest village and gather as many souls there as it could. Creating villages of death seemed to be the only purpose of the creatures, and they were very, very good at it.

_Not on my watch, pal._ Asher ran after the nightmare as fast as his long legs would take him, until –

"Move, Asher!"

Keon-hee! The ruckus must have finally awakened her. He turned, saw what she planned to do, and dove for cover, swearing at the top of his lungs as his bleeding elbow scraped sand and rocks.

Keon-hee, who had probably pulled that morning star from Sang-eo's mysterious depths, had impaled an Ephemeral Card on one of its spikes. She swung it overhead by the chain until it hummed, and the Card began to glow. When she called its name – "Turbo Turtle!" – it responded with a burst of magic. The spiked ball transformed into a peridot-shelled turtle, spinning with a lethal _whee!_ toward the fleeing nightmare. Its eyes glowed within the blackness of its shell, blurring into streaks of white with its speed.

Guided by its Card Master's will, the flying turtle caught up to the nightmare and sliced the monster in half. It spun around and caught up again, and the monster's torso dissolved in a spray of chunks. The legs, still trying to run, thudded to the ground.

The watching caravaners cheered, applauding in the native way by slapping their hands on their thighs. Encouraged, Keon-hee commanded Turbo Turtle to clean up the remaining nightmares, which were losing strength due to the heartened cheering.

That should have been the end of it. Asher started to push himself up but, with a lurch of his stomach, he felt the vomit-reflex upsurge of elemental power. It ruffled his hair, making it stand on end the way static electricity did.

Abruptly, the cheering stopped. Turbo Turtle whizzed around with renewed fervor, bashing through covered wagons, unprotected tents, and the caravan's precious supplies. Pots shattered. Canvas tore. Wagons crashed onto their sides. Pimkies flocked into the sky, twittering madly amid a shower of fern-green feathers. The screaming resumed.

"Asher!" Keon-hee shrieked. The chain had morphed into a rope of water, trapping her arms and legs, sucking the magic from her body to fuel the renegade Ephemeral Card. "I can't make this stop!"

"What, are you _stupid?"_ Asher tried to run to her but had to duck as the damn turtle tried to play Tag with his skull. "I told you to never use Cards you couldn't control!"

Keon-hee couldn't answer. She was crying too hard.

Hissing a choice curse, Asher readied himself to tackle the kid, hoping to break her connection to the Ephemeral Card. The _whee!_ behind him was his only warning.

A white crack of lightning split the world in two.

* * *

_**A/N: **Well, whatcha think? Please leave a review on your way out and let me know! I'm very friendly, I promise. ;3_

_Reviewer Thanks! To my dear reader, **St4r Hunter**, you made me really happy. Thank you!_

_Until next time,_

_Anne_


	3. Stage Two, part one

Just then, a memory jumped into Asher's head, of when he and Keon-hee had met.

**One month prior, the southern city of Elidu . . .**

"I came here to collect an Ephemeral Card, not take on a job for _you,"_ Asher grumbled.

He trudged over endless dunes while the sun beat at his shoulders and head through his makeshift cloak. The desert heat felt good, though the sand rubbing his feet raw through his open-heeled shoes was getting old.

The fish-thing he'd unintentionally picked up in an alley thrashed in agitation.

"Take it easy!" Asher paused to remove his hood, shaking out his sweaty hair in the dry, hot air. Then he looked down at the fish. "This is the one I'm supposed to rescue?" he asked.

The dehydrated fish flapped its fins, its reddened, swollen eyes rolling.

Asher sighed, squinting against a headache that had started in one temple. "I can't believe I have to deal with this."

He held out his left arm so that he and the fish could look each other in the face like men. The damn thing swallowed a little more of his arm, just an inch or two until its snub nose nearly reached his shoulder.

"All right!" Asher yelled, trying, once again, to shake it loose. "I'll help you. Just let go!"

In reply, it chewed manically on his biceps, teeth snagging in denim.

With a sigh, Asher knelt to study the unconscious figure lying in the sand. She was an alien, judging by the pale skin that shimmered like abalone shell under Ephemeros's fierce white sun and the sea-colored hair, blue eyebrows furrowed over thick blue eyelashes. Just a kid. She had obviously collapsed amid the windswept dunes.

"She isn't hurt, you know," he said in a softer voice. The gnashing jaws stilled, so he put the edge of his free hand against the girl's forehead. "She's just dirty. And she might have a fever. I know a guy who can help her, so I'll take her to the city."

Apparently reassured, the fish regurgitated Asher's arm and fell with a plop in the sand. It coughed a couple of times, and then a length of leather strap rolled out from between its teeth, which it hooked to two rings that pierced its tailfin and its jaw. Without hands, it managed to wrap the strap crosswise over the girl's shoulder and settled, with a happier look, in the small of her back like a very weird duffel bag.

Asher watched the whole procedure impassively. While his hand had been inside the thing, he had felt many odd-shaped objects, but nothing like the slimy guts of a fish. It looked up at him then with a pitiful, bloodshot, doll-like eye, pleading for his help.

There was nothing for it. Asher scooped up the girl, slinging her with some difficulty onto his back. Holding her like an awkward backpack, he turned and began the long trek back to the city.

She woke once near sunset, for he could feel her lift her head and her gasp on the rim of his ear, as he topped a final rise and Elidu came into sight. Then she passed out again, whimpering slightly.

The crags drew together, funneling Asher toward a natural bridge of rock, which protected the city's entrance. A cooler blast of air issued from beneath the bridge, setting the tall, lush, blue-violet trees rustling. There, in the modest and efficient adobe buildings of the southern Ephemeros city, they would find shelter, food, and water. Plus, the Ephemeral Card he had come to trade for in the first place. He made his way through the wide streets, which were shaded by the high bluffs and bustling with activity. Adventurers, mercenaries, journeymen, and mancers of the Elementis Achaici plied their trade among close-packed shops and stalls, though aliens like Asher and the girl on his back were few. Well-dressed civilians on the shop for dinner gave him a wide berth as he turned the corner toward Mareh, a Card trading post owned by his friend, Evidd.

Evidd opened the back door to his knock, took one startled look at Asher and the unconscious girl, and yanked them inside. The door slammed shut behind them.

..::~*~::..

"Three Cards."

"Forget it. You've got to give me at least five Cards."

Night had fallen, and the street lamps had been lit. But on this night, Mareh Trading Post was not open for general business.

"Some things never change, Ev," Asher said, snarling through his grin. "Except for your prices. They just keep going up and up and up! Five is a big hike over last year."

Evidd mimicked his less-than-friendly grin. "Sorry, Ash. I've got to eat, too. Inflation's pretty bad this year."

Asher glared at Evidd, but Evidd didn't back down. Something had changed him since the last time Asher had rolled through town, made more of a man out of him. The bandanna Evidd used to keep his long, crinkled hair out of his face was the same, though, as were the wire-rimmed spectacles he pulled out of his pocket, snapped open, and placed on his nose.

Smiling, Evidd picked up a receipt book and pen from next to his clockwork cash register. He dipped the nib in a tiny pot of watery green ink and held it ready. "So, then, five?"

"Four, or I set fire to the shop," Asher retorted, holding up a smoking Zini Card. When his friend grudgingly agreed, he set his canvas seabag on the floor so he could search for the wallet in which he kept his less-used Ephemeral Cards. "Throw in one of those new healing potions, will you? The big one."

"You got it," Evidd said, perking up immediately. He made a tick on his notepad with a happy flourish. "If you give me three more Cards, you can purchase Zinika and get the healing potion for half off regular sale price."

"Nah." Asher selected four Ephemeral Cards from the wallet's folds: two common water-type Undi, a single common metal-type Tini, and the mid-grade metal-type Keloa. All good Ephemeral Cards, but useless to a fire-type Card Master like himself. "You know, I wouldn't be buying into your racket if I didn't need a high-powered Card to take care of the mess in East Hasalmawet. It'll be tough, but Zind should be enough. I nailed some punks near Basanose with just Zini."

"Ah," Evidd said, pulling down a _Red Book of Fire_ from the shelf behind the register. He flipped through the pages, his back to Asher. "So that's where you were."

"You know it?" Asher asked. He accepted the Zind Card from his friend.

"Sure," Evidd said, smiling in an unbearably sappy way. "My wife Nimua and I got married there."

Marriage. A wife. That explained a lot. Asher wasn't interested in such chains. Still, a wedding in Basanose . . . Had to have been recent, too . . .

"You sure surprised me, showing up with that girl the way you did. I can't imagine why the Vigilante Corps didn't stop you," Evidd said, breaking into Asher's thoughts. "I thought I'd have to help you bury the body!"

"I didn't see any of the Corps, but I saw the posters." Asher scratched his ear piercings. "You're having some trouble with nightmares lately. They're all over town. Five dead at last count, was that it?"

"Yes. It's a shame."

"Seems to me the Corps isn't doing its job."

"You may be right." Evidd finished filing the new Ephemeral Cards in the proper books, the _Silver Book of Metal_ and the _Blue Book of Water_, and then turned, his face serious. "I have to tell you, Ash, I never expected to see you doing a good deed. That girl you brought in, I guess she felt a lot better after resting. Nimua's up with her now. She was asking for you."

Asher refrained from rolling his eyes with extreme difficulty. He couldn't just bail and leave this burden on Evidd, he supposed. Better go see what she wanted first. _Then_ he could be on his way.

He followed Evidd through the door that opened onto a narrow, rickety staircase, which gave them access to the living quarters above the store. Evidd shut the door, sliding the u-bolt home. Obviously, the threat of nightmares bothered Evidd more than he had let on. Then he led Asher to the small guest room that Asher himself had occupied once or twice. Quite differently from before, Asher could smell the faint perfume of flowers, see them in a little powder-blue vase on the nightstand.

Two women looked up at his entrance, one a blonde-haired human, from a chair, the other the blue-haired alien, tucked into the single-person bed. Two sets of eyes widened at his appearance.

Then the small, pearl-white face of the alien ducked under the edge of an embroidered quilt, which Asher guessed belonged to the new lady of the house. Seaweed-purple eyes studied him warily.

"Where are your manners?" the human named Nimua gently chided her patient. She had the warm, peaches-and-cream complexion of the natives from the northern cities. "Don't you remember the man who saved you?"

Shell-pink color flooded the girl's face. She sat up, mouth open to speak, but Asher stopped her.

"I wasn't trying to save you," he said flatly. He jerked a thumb at the fish, lying on a side table. "That thing took my arm hostage."

The girl's seaweed-colored eyes slid toward the fish. It stiffened guiltily. A look of affection passed across her face, and then she sobered.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. Her accent wasn't unbearable, though pronounced. She hugged her knees. "Sang-eo was just trying to protect me. My memory has been hazy ever since I got thrown from the ship."

"Ship?" Asher frowned, curious in spite of himself. "Are you a sailor?"

The girl shook her head. "I am haenyeo. Namsaeng-i, one of the giant turtles who carry islands on their backs, is our home on the darkling Seas of Hangsang Bam. Sometimes, we travel on smaller ships to fish and harvest from the sea under the light of the stars. A storm came and threw me overboard. Hangsang Bam is friend and mother to all haenyeo, but that night, she was angry and frightened . . ."

Nimua clapped her hands together in delight. "Haenyeo? I've heard that word before. I read it in a book I loved as a girl." She looked up at her husband, her face glowing like a happy child's. "It translates as _mermaid."_

The alien girl cocked her head. "Mer-maid?"

"You're spare," Asher said to Nimua. "Don't mermaids have tails like fish?" At least, that's what he thought he remembered about mermaids. _She'd_ loved ridiculous books like that, too. Humans. They were all the same, no matter what world they came from.

"Dummy!" Nimua winked and grinned. "Mermaid magic allows them to transform into a human body when they walk on land! The little mermaid traded her voice for a human body so she could be with the one she loved, you see."

Asher tried to share a glance with Evidd, but the Card trader was smiling indulgently at his pink-cheeked wife. That time, Asher did roll his eyes.

"I'm sorry, I don't really understand," the girl said. She buried her face in her knees briefly. When she lifted it again, it shone with an urgency Asher remembered all too well. "Um, so can you tell me where I am? And how do I get to Anasika?"

"Anasika?" Nimua put a finger to her chin and lifted eyes as blue as the northern skies to the featureless ceiling.

Evidd shrugged. "Never heard of the place."

"I don't know how I got here," the girl said, her eyes filling with tears. "I only know that I must return to Namsaeng-i. I can reach home from the port at Anasika."

After an uncomfortable moment, in which the girl's gaze had jumped with increasing desperation from face to face, Nimua filled a dainty, posy-painted mug. An inviting curl of steam rose into the cool nighttime air, and Asher couldn't help but sniff appreciatively – the noodle soup broth inside must have come from the popular restaurant next door.

"Here, Keon-hee. Drink this," Nimua said, brushing a lock of blue hair away from the girl's eyes. "It will help calm your nerves."

Her solicitousness jabbed into Asher like a red-hot poker. No one had carried him in from the desert. No one had fed him, or protected him. If it wasn't for him, this kid would be _dead._

"Listen," he harshly said before the girl could take the offered mug. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "There is no place called Anasika. There is no such thing as a Namsa-whatever. You're not in your world anymore. You're an alien here."

Nimua's previously kind face darkened.

"That's quite enough!" she announced. She stood, shaking out her skirt and straightening her apron, and then she set the mug a little harder than necessary on the nightstand. "Could you step outside, please?"

Asher ignored her. Natives never truly cared for aliens, no matter the show they made of their generosity at first. He looked past her as though she wasn't there, causing her to huff and put her fists on her hips.

The alien girl met his gaze, tears pouring over her cheeks.

"If I were you, I'd get used to this place," he said brutally. "You're never gonna get back home. And a word of advice? Don't travel alone or a nightmare will get you."

He marched out of the room and down the stairs. Evidd did not follow him.

This suited Asher just fine. In the quiet, book-filled shop, which crackled and whispered with the latent energy of sleeping Ephemeral Cards, he tightened the laces of his shoes, packed away his Card wallet, slung his saber from his belt, and swung his heavy seabag over his shoulder. Time to move on, now that he had the Zind Card. His new contract was waiting for him on the Black Tortoise road, a native named Elyk. Elyk wanted an escort to East Hasalmawet since the last anyone had heard, it had become a village of death.

Asher, having left the Mareh Trading Post Closed for Business sign swinging, made it as far as the back alley before the girl came charging out right behind him. The sign swung harder, scraping the door.

Her people must have lived in tropical seas, for she wore very little in shades of white and teal, just a cropped, short-sleeved shirt that barely contained the surprisingly mature swell of her breasts, a pair of shorts belted around her thin waist, and sandals tied with striped ribbons up to her knees. He seriously doubted she even knew what underclothes were. In her haste, she had left the fish-thing behind.

"Wait, please! Mr. Asher?"

He stared at her incredulously – what kind of name was that for a guy like him?

She'd stopped crying, thank the sun. A small breeze lifted a single, thin braid in her boy-short hair, bringing the sounds of dining and talking natives from the restaurant next door. It was a busy night, judging by the noise.

"I want to thank you," she said, steepling her fingers. She spoke to them rather than to him. "You rescued me from the desert, and bought me food –"

"I've got news for you," he interrupted. "I didn't buy you dirt. I didn't get a reward for saving you, either."

The shy smile of gratitude froze on her face as the meaning of his words sank in.

"Hope you work it off," he called as he began walking away.

"I don't understand!" she cried. "Wait, please, I –"

"Where do you think you're going, girl?" a gruff voice demanded. Asher glanced over his shoulder in time to see the proprietor of the restaurant grab the girl's arm. He spun her around and marched her toward the open kitchen door, through which Asher could see a mountain of dirty pots, pans, and other dishes, and two haggard scullions scrubbing for all they were worth. "You still owe me for that meal. Get to work, or we'll get to work on you!"

Completely guilt-free, Asher walked to the front street and merged with the late-evening crowds. He let out a sigh of relief.

_Finally rid of her._

This little detour had cost him a whole day. Who could have known that the fish-thing had been lying in wait behind that stack of crates, prepared to latch onto the first arm that got too close? If he hadn't accidentally kicked a broken bottle, which had pierced his heel and caused him to stumble, he would never have gotten into the thing's range in the first place.

He walked along, ears alert for trouble, his long stride keeping him out of the crush of shoppers and revelers.

Against his chest, the dragon claw twitched.

Asher looked down. The broken claw, stained brown in the cracks, slowly rose from the front of his ratty white shirt, trailing the thong that kept it tied around his neck. It lifted into the air like a question, seeking.

Then it pointed, as straight and true as the needle of a compass.

A grin spread over Asher's face. "Right," he said in a low voice to the claw. "Nothing wrong with a little side trip."

He took off running.

* * *

_**A/N: **Hello, darlings. Finished this a day early, so I thought I'd put it up and focus on the next ThunderCats submission. Please drop a review on your way out!_

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, again! It makes me so happy to see your comments. X3_

_Cheers!_

_Anne_


	4. Stage Two, part two

The claw guided him, faithful to each turn and straight of way. Gradually, Asher left the shopping district behind. The clusters of modest adobe homes gave way to the sweeping drives, the wrought-iron fences, and the clockwork-run mansions of the rich. Gas lamps spread dim circles of light on the cobblestone streets, their timers ticking softly, interspersed with towering purple peppercorn trees, their berries and feathery leaves shining in the mingled moonlight and gaslight. The wind had died down, leaving everything still and quiet. He slowed his pace to make it easier to distinguish, from his own footsteps, a sound that shouldn't be there.

There it was. A door slamming, the dismally muffled bang swallowed by the night. Panicked footsteps, small and insignificant. A woman's short, quick gasps. The scratch of talons on cobbles. A faint screech, hungry but not yet triumphant.

Asher dropped his seabag into a concealing peony bush. He then scaled a spike-topped fence and let himself down onto a smooth lawn. He made a detour through one of the mansions' gardens, emerging in a back alley that was little more than a soot-blackened gutter, enclosed by the brick walls of kitchens, laundries, and sculleries. Tarnished brass clockwork puffed, cranked, and spun, keeping the mansions cool so their occupants could sleep dreamless.

Except for a maid, her stockings torn and her ruffled white cap askew, who burst from an intersecting alley, tripped on a loose cobble, and went down in a skid of garbage slime.

Asher had seen no hint of the Vigilante Corps since leaving Mareh Trading Post. Not a good sign for the people in this neighborhood, but no skin off his nose. He wasn't here for them, anyway. Obscured by the ticking, huffing bulk of a clockwork engine, he slipped a Zini Card from his pocket and sliced into it with his saber to activate it.

The nightmare ambled into view, sure of its kill. This one was built like an ape, its knuckles hanging low to the ground, its head sitting nearly against its chest. It opened its jaws, the human-like pair as well as the insect-mandible pair, revealing its segmented, birdlike tongue. It breathed out a blast of steam as hot as any released by the clockwork engine.

The woman, who seemed to have given up twenty feet from her door, shut her eyes so that her tears squeezed out and drew in a ragged breath.

"Don't scream!" Asher shouted at her, making her jump a foot in the air, which smeared her crisp uniform and caked her fingernails with slime. The nightmare hissed, tongue lashing and spit flying, but Asher looked only at the woman. "Show _no fear!_ Not even a little! Your terror – that's what the nightmare feeds on!"

There was no way to tell if the woman had understood him. Her glazed eyes were fixed and staring behind the lenses of her spectacles. She shook from ruffled cap to patent leather toe, apparently too terrified to breathe. The nightmare, however, screeched with a sound reminiscent of clashing gears.

"A – ali – aliennn," it gargled, and Asher grimaced. Not all nightmares remembered speech, and those that did were far more cunning than those that didn't. "Dessstroy you!"

Asher readied his saber, now alive with Zini's flickering flames. "Not much of a vocabulary, nightmare," he spat. "Don't you bore yourself?"

For an answer, the nightmare's screech ripped into the supersonic, which, unfortunately, Asher's long and sensitive ears could detect. The nightmare launched itself at him, skinless ape arms reaching for their prey like twin anacondas. Asher struck twice with his flaming blade, intending to sever them. Zini only scraped along the bone armor of the left, but managed to gouge a deep, bloody valley through muscle, sinew, and veins in the right. The nightmare stumbled past him and fell, howling in pain. Vile-smelling, pus-colored blood ran into the gutter.

Supremely in control, Asher turned to face his foe. The nightmare writhed on the ground, almost licking the cobblestones as it keened over its bleeding arm. Asher angled the point of his saber down and wrapped both hands around the grip, preparing to thrust the blade through the nightmare's neck. A clean kill, a quick end. Better than any nightmare deserved.

A cloud obscured the shattered moon. It plunged the alley into darkness. He shifted his feet for a more balanced stance. His bare heel, the one the bottle had pierced just that morning, accidentally kicked the same loose cobble the maid had tripped over.

Asher flinched, concentration and stance broken.

The nightmare reared up, screeching. The ape-like arms whipped toward Asher's unguarded chest, intending to crush the life out of him.

He lunged to meet his foe, Zini crackling and burning hotter than ever.

A two-handled wok spun out of the shadows. It cracked the nightmare full in the face, its force smashing the wok flat and throwing the nightmare into a brick wall.

The nightmare sagged against the bricks, and then straightened. It spared the newcomer one look of deepest contempt, casually spat out a bloody fang, and then leaped over Asher like a bird taking flight. It touched down on the shingled roof of the mansion and then bounded out of sight.

The cloud moved on. Visibility in the alley improved.

Asher bit back a frustrated snarl. _"You?"_

"Mr. Asher!" Keon-hee called. She ran up to him, Sang-eo bouncing against her back. "Are you all right?"

Wondering how many of the restaurant owner's pots the fish had swallowed, he bypassed her question for one of his own. "How did you get out of there?" he exploded. The pile of dirty dishes had been taller than she was, and about five times as wide.

"Huh?" She tilted her head, momentarily confused, and then she smiled. "You mean the restaurant? I finished the work."

"Finished? That fast?"

"You kidding?" Keon-hee giggled, proudly holding up her arms to show off a swimmer's muscles. "That was nothing! You should try working on a pirate ship."

_Pirates, now?_ He'd thought mermaids hated pirates. Except Keon-hee wasn't a mermaid. Asher shut his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, she'd be gone. _How do I get myself into these messes?_

"Um."

Reluctantly, Asher opened his eyes.

"You're an alien like me, right?" Keon-hee asked with some hesitancy.

Zini's effects wore off, responding to Asher's cooling emotions. He slung his flame-less saber from his belt and folded his arms, scowling. One Ephemeral Card wasted. "Evidd tell you that?"

"I sort of figured it out for myself," she said, coming closer in her earnestness. "I must ask you a favor. I'll do whatever you want if you'll let me travel with you."

"I don't need a valet."

Keon-hee bit her lips, looking as though he'd struck her. Her meekness was starting to piss him off.

"What?" he asked harshly, fists clenched. "You think I can help you get home?"

"You want to get home, too, don't you, Mr. Asher?" she burst out. Their voices were getting louder. They were no longer within the nightmare's aura, which deadened sound to outsiders, made encounters with them feel like isolated, twisted dreams.

Lights flickered on in the rooms of the mansions which overlooked the alley.

"I don't need anyone's help!" Asher said angrily. "Listen up, because I'm only going to say this once. I have one goal. To find my enemy and kill him. I don't care about getting home!"

Then, before any natives could investigate the noise, he spun on his heel and took off, leaving a bewildered Keon-hee and the slack-jawed maid behind.

..::~*~::..

Two hours passed. Asher lost the nightmare's trail near Market Square. He climbed the bell tower to get a better view of the city below. Crouching atop the cupola, he waited while the desert wind combed through his hair, longer in front than it was in the back, and tugged at the tails of his sash. Every once in a while, the two large gold rings sewn into the ends of the sash clashed together with a musical sound.

Then, just as he was about to give up the hunt, something interesting caught his eye. A flash of teal and white in the shadows of a nearby street: Keon-hee, returning to Mareh Trading Post with Evidd at her side.

Asher narrowed his eyes, his gaze trained on the swinging Closed for Business sign.

Had Evidd gone searching for Keon-hee? A nice gesture, but not one that would ordinarily have benefited a Card trader. Keon-hee had nothing to offer other than a bizarre ability to wash dishes like a clockwork engine. Besides, how had Evidd known where to look for her? Asher was sure the girl had tried to run after him back on Posh Hill, and he'd purposefully taken a serpentine path through the streets to shake her.

He deliberated for perhaps a minute and then swung himself down the tower far enough to leap the gap to the nearest adobe building. As quietly as he could, he hopped over wooden stall awnings and shop rooftops until he reached Mareh. He perched on one of the exposed wooden logs that protruded from the wall close to the roof. The window of the guest room below him was open, its lacy curtain blowing out. He didn't have to strain to hear what was being said inside.

"It's much too dangerous out there, Miss Keon-hee." Evidd, convincingly solicitous as he opened the door and ushered her into the room. "A nightmare is on the loose in this city. It's already attacked six people."

Asher let out a silent breath, cursing his refusal to see what had been right in front of him from the get-go. They'd talked about it earlier, he and Evidd.

_"You're having some trouble with nightmares lately. They're all over town. Five dead at last count, was that it?"_

_"Yes. It's a shame."_

Five people, at last report. Not six. There was no way Evidd could have known about the maid in the alley. Unless . . .

"Well, if you have nowhere to stay, you might as well stay with us," Evidd went on.

"But, Mr. Asher –"

"He'll be back soon," Evidd said, lying so smoothly, so easily, that Asher knew Keon-hee would relax, thinking herself safe and in the company of a friend. "He'll want to claim the Cards he left with me. There's no way he'll leave town without seeing me first."

Far too late, Asher heard the Vigilante Corps strike up a warning, whistles blaring, torches flaring. Hobnailed boots pounded the cobblestones as men in homemade uniforms flooded Market Square, waving halberds and battle-axes.

"Secure the city gates!" they hollered, blowing their whistles. "Stay in your homes! A nightmare has been spotted!"

Asher watched them pass two stories below his perch. Evidd's dark head appeared at the window as he peered out with seeming interest. The curtain fluttered, bringing with it the perfume of flowers.

Keon-hee's blue head appeared next to his. "What's all the excitement?"

"A nightmare," Evidd said quietly. "The one that escaped the Vigilante Corps a few weeks ago is back in the city."

Keon-hee looked at him. "Mr. Asher was fighting it."

"You saw the nightmare?" Evidd asked, as empty of emotion as though he were talking to himself. He turned from her to tie back the curtain. "We don't know where they came from or what they want, but they are the most terrifying creatures in Ephemeros. And we know one thing for sure. Nightmares _hate_ aliens like you."

"Huh? Wha –"

Keon-hee's voice suddenly lost all backbone. Evidd had held an Ephemeral Card up to her face. Asher smelled a brief tang of heated iron, heard a discharge of magical energy, and then two heavy thuds; Keon-hee had fallen first to her knees, and then her side.

"E-Evidd?" she asked weakly.

"Sorry," Evidd said in a monotone. "Metal-type Kagi Card. A low enough level that even a non-Card Master like me can activate it. You are paralyzed. It will last for quite a while." He moved away from the window. "I am sorry, Miss Keon-hee. We just can't tolerate aliens around here."

Asher closed his eyes. Evidd was one of the few natives he had called a friend. Apparently, no matter how many times he tried to beat the lesson into his brain, he never learned it. The consequence of spending too much time around humans and their endless capacity to hope, he supposed.

There was no hope. Not for the dragon-kin.

A sensation passed through him as he brooded, centering in his stomach. He felt briefly nauseated at the upsurge of magical energy. Someone had just used a shadow-type portal Card to pass instantly through space, traveling from _there_ to _here_ with a single step. Someone powerful.

Someone for whom he had been searching for a long, long time. Someone who wanted him, the last of his people, dead. The dragon claw twitched against his chest.

_Jackpot,_ Asher thought with relish.

An entirely new voice spoke, low-pitched, feminine, and amused, as dark and sensual as black silk.

"This is quite new for me. I've never before been this close to an alien," the nightmare said. She paused, and then gave a disappointed little sigh. "I've examined you and I do not sense any power awakening within you."

"Wh-what are you talking about? Who are you?" Keon-hee demanded.

She had partially broken through the paralysis. Asher raised his eyebrows, mildly impressed by the kid's strength of will.

"Let's just say I'm a very hard-working lady. You don't need to know more than that," the nightmare woman said with a girlish giggle, which set Asher's back teeth on edge. "I could eliminate you, but I believe you will serve as bait."

"Bait?" The statement was so ridiculous that Asher decided to make his move. He laughed and dropped to the windowsill so that the lighted lamps in the room threw warm golden light full in his face. He smirked. "What do I look like, a river trout?"

"Mr. Asher!" Keon-hee cried, her whole aspect lighting up in childish trust and relief.

"Ash!" Evidd's face registered shock and guilt. A dull flush crept across his brown cheekbones. "But – you were chasing the escaped nightmare –!"

"Aw, what would be the point?" Asher asked, making himself comfortable on the sill. "Why should I go running after a nightmare when one could just come to me?"

Evidd clenched his teeth, and the grinding of molar against molar was loud enough for them all to hear. "You used _her_ as bait for _us?"_

Asher's gaze slid over the form of the nightmare as though she were made of oil, an unremarkable and indistinct shadow. A small corner of his mind wondered why he could not focus on her. The larger part took stock of Keon-hee, who had pushed herself to her elbows but couldn't yet command her legs.

"Oh, Keon-hee, you are a silly little haenyeo," Asher said in the most patronizing tone he could muster. He knew it was cruel, but even if he couldn't remember the lesson, he would make sure this kid never forgot it. "I warned you about the nightmares, and you still got caught."

Keon-hee's pale face paled further as his barb slid home. He hopped into the room, already dismissing her from notice as he cracked his neck, loosened his shoulders, and drew his saber.

"Now," he said, "I believe I have some business to finish. You said I left Cards here, Ev? Maybe I should help myself, then, now that I know what sort of clientele frequents this place."

Evidd seemed to be choking on his tongue. With a weak human imitation of a snarl, he pounded the side of his fist into a closet door, which swung open to reveal several serviceable but plain broadswords, the kind the Vigilante Corps equipped. The Card trader slid one out of its sheath and charged.

It was an untrained, uncoordinated charge. Asher dodged the sword easily. Before Evidd could recover, Asher's fist smashed into his cheek. Evidd fell back with a grunt, losing his grip on the sword. When Asher stepped up to him, he raised his head, his eyes wild with fright and his hair covering half his face.

"Traders shouldn't mess around with toys too big for them, Ev," Asher crooned. "You should have stuck to your books. It's what you're good at."

He raised his saber, preparing to stab his one-time friend through the heart.

* * *

_**A/N: **Sometimes, I just don't feel like moderating my adjectives and adverbs. That is all. X3_

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, third time's the charm! I appreciate it and the fave/follow. Makes me so happy, so that's why I keep posting!_

_Please leave a review on your way out!_

_Ever Yours,_

_Anne_


	5. Stage Two, part three

_"No!"_

With rapid footsteps, Nimua charged into the room and threw herself across her husband. Her lovely blonde hair was falling out of its ponytail and escaping the pins that kept it out of her eyes. Unshed tears trembled in her lashes, sticking them together in starburst spikes. Her thick eyebrows, darker than her hair, pulled together in the middle, creating the most pitiful expression.

"Please, Mr. Asher!" she cried. "Don't kill my Ev!"

Unmoved by her hysterics, Asher merely looked down at the pair. Nimua locked her arms around Evidd's neck so tightly that he struggled to free himself. She seemed determined to cover as much of his body with her own as was physically possible, even if she had to strangle him in the process.

He succeeded in throwing her off. "I told you to stay inside! You don't know what he's capable of!"

"I won't leave you!" The tears scattered when Nimua violently shook her head. Deciding on a different tactic, she jumped to her feet. She threw her arms wide to hide Evidd with her ruffles, her ribbons, and her apron. She glared at Asher. "If you want to kill Ev, you'll have to kill me, too! I won't just sit here and watch him die!"

Asher studied her angry, tearstained face. She begged mercy with her wide, sky-blue eyes.

Then he saw it: Her right arm, not held quite as straight as the left, nor as high. It trembled ever so slightly. Her lips, pressed tighter on one side as if to hide something. Like maybe a tooth that hadn't been missing before.

"Really?" he asked her quietly. "Okay."

He thrust his saber through her stomach so hard that the point exited her back in a gout of rich red.

Evidd gaped up at the sword hanging above his head, his face splattered with his wife's blood. Asher could feel the weight of Keon-hee's stunned stare.

He ripped the saber out of Nimua, his eyes narrowed. "Just as I thought," he said disgustedly. "You're powerless in your human form."

Evidd began to shake, his pupils contracted to thin dots. "Ni – Nimua," he groaned, his agony constricting his voice. He couldn't seem to tear his gaze away from her.

Nimua did not answer him. She bent forward like a flower whose stem had been nicked by a sickle. Her blood pumped out of the hole in her middle, but it had begun to steam unnaturally. The splatter across Evidd's face steamed and sizzled as well, though he did not seem to notice. The smell of it permeated the room, crawling into Asher's nostrils, thick and coppery. He made a face.

So did Nimua. With a low growl, she bared teeth that lengthened into points as they watched. Her peaches-and-cream complexion grayed and started to bubble, sagging off her skull. The pretty blonde hair sifted around her shoulders. It drifted like golden rain to the floor.

Then her jaw unhinged, and the nightmare began.

It shot upward and outward, exploding from Nimua's nice blue dress and her soft human body with terrible, meaty, wet tearing. It towered over Asher, the same nightmare who had tried to eat a maid in the alley on Posh Hill. Curved horns, high-set nostrils, long, muscled legs, and skinless, ape-like arms. It seemed to fill the room, the top of its head cracking into the ceiling. It screeched while the last of its joints popped and snapped into place, the supersonic stabbing making Asher flinch.

"Ali . . . Alienn," it rasped, segmented tongue exploring the cavernous ribbed palate. _"Destroy!"_

He'd expected as much and had an Ephemeral Card ready in his fingers. "Oh, shut up. You're boring me!"

Asher stabbed the smoking Card the same way he had stabbed Nimua, and it combusted.

"Zind!" he shouted.

Zind obeyed. A fountain of fire gushed from the saber's hilt like flames from a dragon's throat. They roared, hot and hungry, and punched the nightmare square in the chest. With a boom that made the entire building shake, Zind blew the nightmare off its feet, into the wall, _through_ the wall.

Asher brought his sword down swiftly, dispelling the last of Zind's used-up flames. He examined the ragged, charred hole in the wall thoughtfully. The night outside seemed calm beyond the occasional _thunk_ of adobe separating and falling to the floor. Probably, none of the townsfolk had heard the commotion, thanks to the dampening effect of the nightmare's aura. As if to prove this, an owl fluttered past the hole in a whir of cushiony wings, snatched up something small that squeaked, and soared off, unconcerned with the squabbles of aliens and nightmares.

Evidd spoke, haltingly, into the quiet. "How did you . . . know it was her . . . and not me?"

"Easy. You told me that Basanose was your wife's hometown." Asher, observing the dust settle, did not look at his friend. "Well, I've been there. It's a village of death. So I had to ask myself . . ."

He turned then, fury burning behind his sternum. "Why didn't she die with the rest of the town? What's she doing still alive?" He pointed his sword accusingly at Evidd. "Using you as her cover story, that's what!"

A slight flicker at the edge of his sight instantly put him on alert. The nightmare woman was still there, the one he hadn't been able to look at before. Her dark brown hair, bleached to a pale yellow only in the front, framed a smooth, featureless white mask, carved with a curving V-shape that ran from eyes to chin. She wore a forest-green mantle that wrapped her from jaw to toes in heavy folds despite the residual desert heat, and she hovered several inches off the floor, no doubt showing off just a little. He could tell nothing else about her – not age, not figure, not species, whether she was concealing weapons or not. She watched him impassively from darkened eyeholes.

A gulping, indrawn breath sounded from the floor. Asher's ear twitched.

"It – it can't be!" Evidd sobbed brokenly, his words pouring out like noodle soup broth from a posy-painted mug. "Her beautiful smile, the touch of her hand . . . she warmed my heart and my soul! And now, because of you, she has disappeared!"

Keon-hee's wide, innocent eyes drank in everything about the scene from her spot on the floor, but she, like Asher, said nothing. Evidd raised shaking hands to his face, his eyes and his nose streaming.

"I didn't care if she was really a nightmare! I loved her." He dragged himself to his feet, staggered into Asher's personal space, and spat, "A man like you has never loved. You can't understand!"

Asher closed his eyes. The dragon claw twitched fretfully against his chest. A reminder. An admonishment.

"I'll say this once," he said. His foot snapped out, catching his friend in his snot-smeared face. Evidd flew backward and crashed onto the floor, his eyes rolled up and showing white. _"I don't care!_ You've turned soft on me, Ev. Crying! Do you think I give a crap about your problems with women? The nightmares saw your weakness as well as I do and they exploited it!"

In reply, Evidd gurgled. Bubbles of spit foamed at the corner of his mouth. Asher sighed.

"Sorry for destroying your dream, nightmare lady," he said over his shoulder to the floating woman. "Now how about you take off that mask and tell me where I can find the man with the moon tattoo?"

"Ah, dear boy," she said in a kind of purr, "the terror isn't over."

Like grasping shadows, two enormous, skinless hands reached through the hole in the wall. The nightmare lady wafted to the side, allowing the nightmare-that-was-Nimua to haul itself back into the room.

If Asher had thought it grotesque before, that had been nothing compared to what it looked like now.

"Incredible, isn't it?" the masked woman asked, possibly misreading his expression of revulsion for one of awe.

The lesser nightmare swayed on its legs like a caterpillar grasping for a leaf just out of reach. Its torso reached higher than ever, stretched and stretching, as faces pushed outward against a thin, pink mucous membrane. Human faces, all screaming silently, eyes and noses and open mouths pressing against the membrane, shoving into the interstices between the inside-out ribs and pelvis and spine, turning back and forth, seeking air, or freedom, or release. Utterly composed, the Nimua-nightmare exhaled bloody steam.

"What you see here is all the power collected by Evidd's late wife," the masked nightmare went on, her voice bubbling around a girlish, ghoulish giggle, "which is far more terrifying than anything even the vicious human mind can conjure."

Terrifying? Perhaps. Sickening, certainly. This, then, was what became of those poor human souls sacrificed in a village of death – imprisonment in an unending nightmare, until their essence was used up as fuel. This was why the nightmares had come to Elidu.

Asher discerned a large, green, thick-lashed eye under the shadow of the mask, crinkled in a smile. "Care for a taste?" the nightmare asked coquettishly.

The Nimua-nightmare attacked. Its uninjured arm whipped toward Asher. Though he blocked the talons from exposing his intestines to the air with his saber, the strength behind the ape-like arm seemed to have quadrupled. The blow lifted him off his feet and hurled him into a row of shelves. They splintered beneath him, depositing him on the floor, and then dumped their contents all over him. Asher thought he heard Keon-hee call his name. Candles, crockery, and books spilled, broke, and tore.

A five-gallon jar, the kind of heavy pottery that could keep honey fresh, sealed with waxed cloth, rocked unsteadily on the highest shelf, still miraculously attached to the wall. It tilted one way, then another, hesitating. The sound of sloshing came from within.

When the jar made up its mind, it tipped over and rolled ponderously off the shelf.

"Evidd! Look out!" Keon-hee screamed.

"Oh, this is stupid!" Asher snarled at the same time. He kicked his way out of the mess in time to see Keon-hee throw off the paralyzing effect of the Kagi Card and leap.

The jar hit her in the back, knocking her flat across Evidd, who had tried to get out of the way. His face was so swollen that he'd blundered the wrong direction.

Little red roses bloomed over Keon-hee's white shirt: Blood. The contents of the jar had soaked both her and the Card trader, washing away Nimua's filthy pus.

"Miss Keon-hee?" Evidd asked in a bewildered sort of voice, which meant, _Why did you save a guy like me?_

Asher wondered that himself. How could anyone be so _stupid_ –

Unaware of his low opinion of her intelligence, Keon-hee moaned, sitting back on her legs.

Then she, like everyone else in the room, stared in surprise as an activated Ephemeral Card freed itself from the remains of the jar and hovered in front of her. Clear blue water swirled through the air like ribbons of seaweed. From the ribbons, water elementals took form. Sapphire-blue eyes twinkled in sweet cherub faces. Sleepy, pocket-sized turtles spun like lazy tops, peridot-shelled. Tiny lavender dolphins capered through the air. Naked Undis sat on spheres of water; Asher could have held one cupped in the palm of his hand. They danced around Keon-hee, inviting her to play, while the Card glowed and pulsed, waiting to be claimed and commanded.

"Undeneh," Evidd breathed, and then he choked on his saliva when he inhaled in horrified realization. "She hatched! I don't believe it! You're the Sorceress of Water, Miss Keon-hee!"

A scent, fresh like clean laundry, pure as mountain streams, and nectarous as a meadow in spring, clashed with the rotten-meat stench of the nightmares. The Nimua-nightmare, advancing on Asher, straightened like a dog on the hunt. Its head swiveled toward Keon-hee. Its lizard-pupiled eyes narrowed and a growl slipped between its teeth on a blast of more bloody steam.

"Hey! Pay attention!" Asher yelled at Keon-hee, who was sitting in the middle of the frolicking water elementals with her fist to her lips. She looked dazzled, as though she'd never seen anything so cute in her life as the androgynous Undis, who clapped their chubby little hands and laughed at her. "Use whatever weapon you've got! Protect that Card in front of you at all costs!"

Too late, he was too late, for the nightmare had lunged for Keon-hee, sitting defenseless on the floor.

Asher lunged after it, but it evaded him, its feral eyes fixed with hunger on the unprotected Card. "Do it quick if you want to live!" he bellowed. "Show me some guts! _Fight!"_

Keon-hee blinked. She saw the nightmare rearing up in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream.

Sang-eo, whose table had been knocked over when Asher went sailing by it, abruptly puked something long and metallic onto the floor, startling everyone. Keon-hee stared at it for a couple of heartbeats, and then she snatched it up.

"I don't want to die here!" she cried passionately. The thing was a pistol of some sort, and she held it up as if she knew how to use it. "I will go home!"

* * *

_**A/N: **Hello, friends! I've been working on this all week - when I could. Work is busy, home is busy, I contemplated locking myself in a dark closet just so I could have some time alone, lmao. I did a little more tweaking of the vocabulary too, like changing the awkward "In Dream World" to a simpler "Ephemeros," but nothing major. Hope you like it!_

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, I feel like you're my official partner in crime. This one is for you._

_Everyone else, please leave a review on your way out! X3_

_Forever silly, forever tired, forever busy,_

_Anne_


	6. Stage Two, part four

The Ephemeral Card emitted a bright blue flash, and Keon-hee called, "Undeneh!"

Traders like Evidd knew Card lore better than anyone, except perhaps the five grandmancers of the Elementis Achaici. He was right about Keon-hee being the Sorceress of Water. The newly-hatched Ephemeral Card bonded with Keon-hee's water pistol – a toy for children! In front of their eyes, the pistol grew long, flowing fins. A large fish tail and the torso of a fish-scaled woman sprouted from the hands Keon-hee kept clenched around the pistol's grip. The barrel protruded from the fish-woman's mouth, double the original length, and crusted with pearls and suckers.

Keon-hee propped herself up on one knee, while the fish-tailed woman fitted herself in place over the haenyeo's shoulder. Keon-hee aimed.

She pulled the trigger.

The lesser nightmare stood no chance against Undeneh, the second-to-highest Card rank of the water element. The pressurized blast from the pistol barrel ripped through its monstrous flesh, stripping it from the bone. It washed the pus-colored blood and pink mucous membrane clean. As the shreds of nightmare peeled out of existence, one by one, human bodies knitted themselves together with water and magic. Men, women, and children, as naked as the Undis, dropped to the floor. Asher squinted through the maelstrom, trying to determine if the humans were dead or alive.

Keon-hee fired again and a tsunami exploded out of Mareh Trading Post. The wave rolled over the streets and buildings, its crest taking out the top two-thirds of the bell tower.

Without the nightmare's dampening aura, the subsonic rumbling of the colossal wave and the destruction of the market district could be heard for miles. The screams began about the same time the bell crashed to the ground, spewing gears, cogs, and bolts like bullets.

"What's going on?"

"All this water!"

"Is it from a nightmare?"

Amid the pain and the grief, some of the luckier townsfolk, who hadn't been washed away or crushed by demolished adobe and clockwork, stared apprehensively up at the sky, holding out their hands to the rain falling from a clear, starry night.

Asher couldn't afford to worry about them. The rain fell right through the decimated roof of Evidd's shop, soaking his clothes, adding pounds of weight to the worn denim. He picked up his saber and prepared to spring.

The nightmare woman pushed her dripping, bleached hair back. "How did she do that?" she demanded of a thoroughly drenched Evidd in an angry, nails-on-chalkboard screech. "With only an elemental power, she brought back the dead!"

Unfortunately, she heard Asher splashing toward her. She fluidly bowed out of the way.

Almost.

He felt the resistance as his blade sliced into her mask. A sizeable chunk went flying.

The nightmare stumbled back, landing abruptly on the wet floorboards. She threw out her arms for balance, revealing a very appealing human body clad in a leather bikini. Asher took a moment to appreciate the thigh-high armored boots and gravity-defying breasts before speaking.

"Looks like that kid saved me a lot of trouble," he said. The falling rain hissed as it landed on his smoking saber. He narrowed his eyes at the nightmare, who held her broken mask in place with one hand. Whoever she was, she either couldn't survive without the mask or she didn't want to reveal her identity. A growl built up in Asher's chest. Nightmares were such cowards. "Now, I want an answer or I'll remove a lot more than just your mask."

The folds of her cloak settled around her. She looked at him, cornered, silent.

The attack came from a different quarter.

A burst of water shot by his right ear, strong enough to bulldoze through the adobe wall behind him, close enough to leave a cut that wept scarlet down his cheek. Slowly, well aware of the nightmare's hidden eyes tracking his every move, he turned.

"No way," he muttered. "The dumb kid! She can't even control it!"

Keon-hee was unconscious. She dangled by one arm, her sandals skimming the floorboards, which were awash in several inches of crystalline water. It poured in rushing waterfalls out of the ruined building, flooding the rubble-strewn streets below. Undeneh, having seized total control of both the haenyeo and her water pistol, leveled a helmeted, visored glare at Asher – which meant that of the three other people in the room, he was the strongest in terms of magical power.

No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than the nightmare lady activated another portal card.

"The city will be destroyed by the flood before the girl regains her power," she said. Already, she was nothing more than her broken mask and swirling cloak. She threw his words back at him, mocking him. "It looks like the two of you have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Huh? Hey! Wait, you punk!" Asher struck at her but encountered only wisps of shadow that dissolved like mist in the wind.

While his back was turned, Undeneh made her move. She spread her fins like wings, shooting a continuous stream of water at lethal velocities from the pearl- and sucker-encrusted pistol barrel protruding between her lips, and used her thick tail to launch herself through the biggest hole in the roof.

Shaking his sopping hair out of his face, Asher stared up at her. She hovered like a vengeful cloud, silhouetted by the bitten-cookie moon and its drifting crumbs, while the rain came down in sheets and the shaken and uncoordinated Vigilante Corps tried to evacuate the district.

He sighed. How was he supposed to get Keon-hee out of _that?_

Evidd spoke from the floor. "It was too much elemental power too quickly. She advanced several control levels at once, so the Card reacted."

"So now what?" Asher asked.

"I give you Zinika," Evidd said tonelessly. He stood, the rain beading up in his mass of curls. "You summon her."

"Why should I trust you?"

Evidd didn't answer for a moment. His face had gained a few years, the normally warm brown of his skin slightly ashen. His woolen eyebrows lowered. "I – I owe you a debt. I want to pay it. That nightmare tricked me. I have only myself to blame."

He pulled a red Ephemeral Card from his pocket, the inverted E embossed on the back resting on five power dots. Zinika, the highest-ranked fire Card. Evidd bowed over it, in apology, in supplication. "This store – our home – this is all that I have left of Nimua. I can't let Undeneh demolish it!"

Asher stared at him. Then his lips quirked up and he breathed a laugh. "Now," he said, and he snatched the Ephemeral Card from Evidd's hand, "that's the Ev I remember."

"Ash?"

Instead of answering, Asher planted his saber point-first into the swollen floorboards. He wouldn't need it with Zinika who, instead of utilizing a weapon, melded directly with her Card Master. There was a reason five-dot Ephemeral Cards were so rare and precious; together, Card spirit and summoner became a being of pure elemental mastery, one mind and one body.

Asher had never been one to shout complicated spells over his Cards. He put his hand, palm down, on top of Zinika, and willed her into being. The Ephemeral Card burst into flame, and the flame encased Asher from his toes to the tips of his hair. The heat burned through him, but it felt _good._ Shackled by his will, the raw power set about remaking his form.

Zinika, being female, did not need his height or his bulk; his whole body shrank to that of a child, while scads of dark hair burst from his skull to hang in skeins and tangles to his waist. He could tell that she approved of his dragon blood, though. Two small, spiral horns grew from the tangles of hair, just behind his pointed ears, and two leathery, delicate-boned wings erupted from his back. New clothes, formed of fire and smoke, dressed his remade body.

The world looked so different when he was this size, out of sync with his psyche. Ephemeral Card spirits could see a broader spectrum of infrared and ultraviolet as well so that everything shimmered around Asher like burning coals and minerals – the buildings, the trees, the people, and even the rain.

Asher held out his hands and let Zinika's power – his power now – collect in his palms in two swirling, sparking balls of flame. Undeneh, high in the sky, snapped her head down, and the pearl-encrusted barrel pointed straight at him, suckers slurping at the air.

"That's all for today," he said, disgusted by the boyish voice that issued from his mouth but knowing he could do nothing about it. He spread his wings and lifted into the air. "I know you can barely control what you've got. Time to go back to sleep."

Predictably, Undeneh chose to attack. Asher clenched his fists and the power detonated from his entire body. The firestorm blazed through the rain and engulfed Undeneh. A pillar of yellow fire pierced the clouds, vaporizing them.

After that, Undeneh surrendered without much of a fight and shrank back into her Card. Keon-hee fell with the last of the rain, which, probably because Undeneh was usually a gentle, nurturing spirit, cushioned her landing. Asher emerged from the smoke and the steam unharmed. He caught the blue Ephemeral Card, noting the four power dots on the back, and then he flew down to Keon-hee, sprawled in a puddle, still unconscious.

He studied her for a few minutes. She had a pretty good body. Thank the gods she was too young to know it.

Then he looked down at himself, the smooth, flat expanse of his chest and stomach, the thick locks of dark hair that poured over his thin shoulders. The dragon claw, which usually rested against his sternum, tickled his navel.

"Gods, I look ridiculous like this," he grumbled.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard Zinika giggle.

_I can't figure it out,_ he thought at her as Keon-hee stirred. _How do I get myself into these situations?_

Zinika did not have an answer beyond a feeling of deep amusement. She released him at his command, brushing a fiery kiss on his cheek before she surrendered to slumber. He tucked her away, not one to pass up a free, high-powered Card.

He picked his way through the rubble, past the resurrected and bewildered humans waking from their nightmare, naked and wet and far from home. Cries rose into the damp air, of fear, surprise, and gladness. Family and friends reunited, holding each other while they cried and laughed.

Evidd, standing at the huge hole in his wall, did not join them. Asher saw him kneel as awkwardly as a very old man and come up with something out of the mess – a scrap of charred blue ribbon.

Evidd brought the scrap to his lips. Silent tears poured down his face.

..::~*~::..

Asher would have liked to leave earlier, but noon came and went before Evidd and Keon-hee met him on the dunes outside of Elidu. Evidd set his backpack down next to Asher's canvas seabag. It sank a few inches in the sand since it was stuffed with Card books and whatever else he had managed to salvage from his shop. Unfortunately, the shop itself had been beyond repair.

"You two have saved the city from the nightmares," he said by way of greeting. "Now it's time for me to move on. I'm going to start my business over in another town."

Asher looked at his friend's sad profile. "Yeah," he said, "but Ev, what if the nightmares trick you again? You're vulnerable and they know it."

Evidd clenched his jaw, but couldn't seem to come up with an answer. Asher scrubbed a troubled hand through his hair.

Keon-hee unexpectedly spoke up.

"He'll be fine," she said. Then, without asking, she took the scrap of ribbon from Evidd, turned him around, and tied back his mass of hair with it.

He couldn't seem to find words for her, either, but he made no move to take out the ribbon.

Keon-hee smiled at him. "If your beloved Nimua still lives in your heart, she will keep you safe."

Asher suspected that Evidd was tearing up again. His friend wasn't hopeless, but he was damn close.

"Right, well, I'm all set, so . . ." Asher slung his seabag over his shoulder. He flipped the pair of them a wave and began to walk away, his long stride eating up the distance between them and the eastern highway. That new hire Elyk was waiting for him.

He hadn't gone more than ten steps before his dragon claw twitched against his shirt. Without warning, it flew up and smacked him right in the face.

"Dammit!" he snarled at it while it quivered angrily on its thong. "I know, I know!"

He turned. Evidd and Keon-hee stood together, staring rather forlornly after him. Even Sang-eo, resting in the small of its mistress's back, rolled a pitiful, doll-like eye at him. He bit back a sigh.

"Look," he said ungraciously to Keon-hee, "you can come along with me because you can use Ephemeral Cards, but I can't promise you that we'll ever find a way back home."

She looked at him with wide, seaweed-purple eyes, but she didn't interrupt him.

"All I care about is finding the man with the moon tattoo," he went on, uncomfortable with speaking these most private of thoughts aloud, but determined to get it out. She needed to know. "I'm going to chase the nightmares until either I find him or they eat me alive. And another thing. If the nightmares possess you in any way, I will kill you."

She seemed to absorb his words while the hot desert wind combed through her short hair. Asher didn't touch the dragon claw, but he felt it, heavy against his chest. They could fool him once, but never again.

"If you can deal with my rules, then you can come," he said quietly. The sand shifted around his feet, dry and dusty. "If not, then I'm gone. It's up to you."

A shy smile spread across her sunburned face. "Mr. Asher, I will do my best to help you on your quest!"

All right, then. "Do you have any other skills besides the Cards? Anything that'll help out on the journey?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, what?"

"Fishing!" she said happily, while the blazing desert sun beat down on their heads. "I'm great at catching fish!"

..::~*~::..

Asher . . .

_Asher . . ._

"Asher!"

**Present Day, Southern Craglands . . .**

Asher tried to open his eyes, but they resisted. Then they sprang open as the suction released the lids. The stickiness extended from his hairline to his chin, a solid sheet of blood.

Keon-hee hovered over him, her tears splashing his hot face.

"Oh, hananim, I was so scared!" she cried, sitting back so he could sit up. "I thought you were dead!"

He replied with a wordless grumble. His fingers explored the new dent in his skull, courtesy of Turbo Turtle. It felt like the bleeding had stopped, at least. So had the screams, which were the last thing he remembered.

He looked at Keon-hee. She looked back at him, holding her breath, but a few more tears leaked out.

He whacked her right in her blue-haired head. "Stop crying!" he shouted at her. "What kind of wimp do you think I am?"

She hunched over, clutching her hair. "Ouch!"

"Firelord," said a gravelly voice somewhere over their heads.

Asher got shakily to his feet. He turned to face the headman, and his mouth dropped open.

The caravan was in shambles. New craters dotted the land, while wagons and tents and campfires looked as though they had been bombed. The caravaners were scattered through the ruins, helping those too badly hurt to stand.

The headman smiled. "I don't mean to interrupt whatever the two of you were up to," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word, "but I think we should settle up your fee before you move on."

Keon-hee hung her head. Asher couldn't speak. He stared open-mouthed at the destruction, at the slip of paper the headman held out to him.

Fee for guarding caravan

minus cost for damages . . .

Total Due . . .

Asher swooned. _Gods, I wish I hadn't brought this little brat with me!_

* * *

_**A/N: **I just can't seem to leave well enough alone, haha. I wanted to make Keon-hee sound a little more alien, so Sharkie has become Sang-eo._

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, you're the bestest of the best and I can't thank you enough._

_Before you go, Dear Readers, please review! I truly hope you're all enjoying this, because that's why writers write. ;3_

_Ever Yours,_

_Anne_


	7. Stage Three, part one

Jace retained fleeting impressions of her arrival.

**A forest? . . .**

The torrent of rain and shadows spat her out on a nighttime hillside, clothes shredded, limbs tangled with her bike. She managed to ease her broken helmet off but blacked out several times in freeing her leg. After, she crawled down the hill, pulling herself along by the trunks of trees, forcing her way through the underbrush, into a weed-choked ditch at the side of a dirt road.

There, lying in the mud at the bottom of the ditch, she passed out a final time, exhausted enough in mind and body to die.

In the morning, traffic appeared on the road. People, dressed like cosplayers at a Renaissance Festival, passed by on foot with pack donkeys striped like zebras plodding along beside them, or driving mule-drawn wagons where the mules were the size of Clydesdales, or on horseback – or was that unicorn-back? Where they came from and where they were going, Jace couldn't begin to guess. She found it oddly easy to believe that she was no longer in her world. For one thing, the grass and leafage were an odd gray-blue-green, and the stars formed colorful swirls and whorls in the sky like an imitation Van Gogh painting. For another, it was _quiet._ No thrum of vehicles on a highway. No internet videos blaring from a distant smartphone. No lawnmowers, or jackhammers, or sirens. No hum and buzz of industrialization, a background symphony she hadn't even been aware of because she'd been hearing it her whole life. Here, there was just the isolation, the mud, and the pain. She lay there for days as the unfiltered, too-white sun wheeled through the sky, chased by the night spangled with paint-splat stars, and the people trudged endlessly by.

Insects, immobility, and a terrible thirst tormented her; blood loss, sunburn, and a raging fever made her babble as she pleaded with the people to stop and help her. They cast her frightened or angry looks. They talked to each other and threw insults at her that she could understand despite what she interpreted as a pronounced accent. Sometimes, they threw other things. The children favored road apples and rocks.

None helped her.

She didn't expect them to, not the Jace nurtured by a society where it was perfectly acceptable for people to avert their eyes from the sick and the homeless. Still, where she came from, the police would eventually have shown up and carted her off to jail, or the hospital, or the morgue, whichever was necessary.

Here, it was the nightmares.

They came in the night, slithering through tall grass, twining in the trees. They appeared to her delirious mind like half-formed mutants, both animal and human, whispering to each other in a language that was like her own, if heard through a thickly insulated wall, sinuous, sensuous, and sibilant. Lizards. Snakes. Alligators. Lions. Wolves. They crept up to her, sniffing, licking, touching, while she sobbed helpless tears of fear and loathing and pain.

Then, gently with their misshapen, clawed hands, they picked her up out of the mud and carried her away.

..::~*~::..

"An alien who cannot master the Cards is of no use to us. Kill her and be done."

**Twilight, Palatium Somnia . . . **

"Patience, Khonsu. Were you not the one who forced Anhell to bring her here?"

"Isis. My patience wears thin. I have permitted you to waste far too much time on this alien already."

Isis smiled behind her concealing mask. She did not remove her gaze from the scene in the mammoth crystal ball, big enough to encase a full-grown man, cradled in the center of an iron flower like a drop of dew. So much was at stake. So much was riding on this crippled alien, who would, if all went to plan, awaken as a powerful ally to the nightmares. "No one asked you to stay and watch," she said.

From the glowing crystal ball, a scream of terror made Khonsu tilt his flat, expressionless mask down. A triple moon symbol, two in-facing crescents flanking a circle, glinted in obsidian and moonstone upon its brow in the light of the crystal ball and a few flameless torches.

He turned back to her. "I need not remind you that it was through no one's fault but your own that the Sorceress of Water awoke too soon and is, for the moment, beyond our grasp, as is the Firelord. Twice, you have failed me. Yet you suggest I leave you to squander our resources uninhibited? My tireless work in the worlds connected to Ephemeros has amassed the wealth you seem to take for granted, which allows our people luxuries beyond their wildest dreams. Woman, you forget your place."

"I forget nothing," Isis said sharply. She glared at Khonsu, already feeling the heat of his attraction reaching out for her, swirling in the bruised aura that defined many nightmares, brushing against and teasing her own. How many times must she repel his unwanted advances?

"Prove it," he said, his voice dark, commanding, and thick with desire. "On your knees."

Isis softened her stance, projecting a serenity rarely known to her kind, knowing that resistance was what attracted and excited him. Nightmares obeyed no laws but their own. Still, it would not do to let Khonsu run away with either his ego or his libido. "Perhaps it is you who forget your place. I am not your plaything. And neither is she. She will be a nightmare. Of that, I promise you."

Isis looked into the crystal ball again, holding her elbows in her palms. Across the milky curved face of the ball, trees flashed by as dark figures chased each other through the star-shadows. It wouldn't be long, now. The alien was getting closer.

"You have no idea of the riches you spurn, Isis," Khonsu seethed, ignoring the alien and her pursuers. His hand inched for his sword grip. "Your beauty does not blind a man completely. You think you offer nothing when you offer everything, and as such have no right to deny it. You cannot flaunt your body without eventually giving in. It is because you have never known –"

"The touch of a real man?" Isis interrupted. She threw back her head and laughed. It wasn't the laugh she remembered, for it was a little too loud, went on a little too long, and its high pitch made even the man with the moon tattoo flinch. It was the laugh of a nightmare. "Oh, I have, dearest Khonsu, and you will never compare. Leave me. I'm sure you have better things to do, other . . . women . . . to seduce. Or men. Or perhaps goats! Whichever you fancy this week."

He hit her.

His fist slammed into her exposed middle, expelling her laughter and her scorn in a painful, bile-flavored grunt. Isis flew across the viewing chamber and fetched, with a bone-bruising smack, against the far wall. She crumpled to the floor and listened to Khonsu's iron-shod boots marching away.

After a disoriented moment, Isis pushed herself to her hands and knees, holding her stomach, trying not to let her guts spill out of her mouth while she wore the mask. She weaved to her feet, shaking her long brown ponytail over her shoulder, straightening her skimpy top, pulling the ample folds of her cloak closed. She wore what she pleased. She knew she was tempting fate, so to speak. Still, she must remember not to strike Khonsu so sharply with her words next time. He might feed her a length of steel instead of his knuckles.

Even a nightmare could feel fear.

A prolonged crack reverberated out of the crystal ball, not like crystal shattering, but like a dozen eggs cracking at once. Excitement coursed through Isis, shoving aside the memory of Khonsu's huge, hairy-fingered fist impacting her spine through her stomach. She hurried to the iron flower and peered into the crystal ball's misty depths.

..::~*~::..

_"Protect the egg."_

**Third-night, Bourneyate Woodland . . .**

That was the only instruction Jace had been given. She had spent the first night searching for an egg roughly the size of an ostrich's, but the textured shell of which shimmered in the colors of the Northern Lights. She found it in an abandoned nest inside a hollow tree, where the shadows hung thick and impenetrable. The egg felt like alligator skin, bumpy and ridged, but light as air, as if there were nothing inside.

The hunters didn't show up until the second night, unclipping their lizard-dogs from their harnesses and sending them barreling through her camp. They scattered her fire, tore down her tent, and trampled her larger supplies, but she had gotten away with both the egg and her backpack simply by sitting on the ground and using a low-level Ephemeral Card, Black Hole. The shadows beneath her butt had opened up and swallowed her. The last she had seen of the hunters were their outraged faces. She'd hoped that would be the last she saw of them forever.

Black Hole's portal deposited her in another part of the woodland. She took Isis's advice, hitched her backpack more securely on her shoulders, and began to hike deeper in. She would be all right for a few days. Living in the Rockies had at least taught her outdoorsmanship, and the weather here seemed mild.

Striking the egg would not break it, she learned. Nor would squashing it, or dropping it. Good thing, too, because she dropped the awkward thing several times in the next two nights, and fell on it once. Not surprising, considering there had been no daybreaks and no moon in the past sixty or so hours, and the darkness seemed to live and breathe in the woodland around her.

Not that she wanted to see the moon. It unnerved Jace every time she looked at it. It was broken, as though something had burst out of its core and left the shattered shell hanging in space, a thousand times closer to the planet than her own soft gray moon.

She tore her gaze from the moonless sky and fixed it on the egg in her arms. A very special creature was growing inside it. A spirit of magical power, or so Isis had explained, her thick-lashed, green eyes crinkling through her mask when she smiled. If Jace could protect the egg until it hatched in its natural element – that of shadows, darkness, and night – then it would be hers.

Jace wasn't sure what that meant, but Isis and her nightmares had saved her. Taken her in, cleaned her, fed her, given her a place to live, and tried to heal her; her left leg would never be the same again, not after the accident, but at least she was walking without support, and, she had recently discovered, could run for short distances.

The nightmares weren't so terrifying, either. She must have been hallucinating that night they'd come for her. They were just people, outcasts trying to get by in a world that hated them and called them nasty names to make them into monsters. Their social standing reminded her of that of the minorities in her old world, the poor, the people of color, the LGBT, the _other. _Palatium Somnia, a marvelous palace of wishes and wonders, had become their home, their refuge. They weren't nightmares. They were dreamers. And now, so was she.

For the most part, she did not miss the life she had left behind. It had been a life of loneliness, meaningless work, and limited means. This new life was a dream come true, despite her weak, scarred leg and the music on-demand to which she no longer had access. Her phone battery had run itself down in her backpack, still on her shoulders while she lay dying in a ditch. The conveniences of the Digital Age did not exist here, but so many other wonderful things did. All she had to do to keep them was to protect the egg.

_Easier said than done,_ she thought grimly. Near the banks of a misty, black lake, the hunters had found her. They were terrible, the stereotypically rough-voiced, foul-mouthed men that ignorant people pictured when they thought of bikers, the kind of leather-bound muscle-heads who rode Harleys and supposedly never bathed. _These_ were the people who hunted nightmares. _These_ were family to those endless people who had left her to die, bruised and sickened by the rocks and feces their children had thrown at her. _These_ were the so-called good guys. Yeah, right.

As quietly as the undergrowth allowed, Jace angled away from the lake and slid down a slope that dropped away beneath the exposed roots of a strange tree, one she had no name for, its leaves halfway between needle and fan. She surfed into a pile of mulch collected in a dirt-lined dip beneath the tree's roots and then crouched there. Struggling to calm her breathing. Listening. Waiting.

The egg pulsed against her chest. Something squirmed beneath the lizard-skin shell, and she hugged it tighter in response to her immediate desire to drop the thing. Again.

Not long now, she hoped.

The night settled around her, breathless. No wind. No animals. No insects, even.

Back home, that would have meant a predator was near. Were the rules of life the same here? Were the woodland creatures hiding because of her, or – ?

A lizard-dog thrust its snarling face through the tree roots and snapped and slobbered close to her ear. Jace screamed and kicked it. Her riding boot connected with its nose and it yelped. It jerked backward through the roots, shaking leaves and bark and broken twigs from the tree, while she scrambled out the other side. She slipped and slid down the rest of the hill, feeling a bit like an out-of-control kid at the skating rink, wobbling past obstacles while she tried to put some distance between herself and the pack of hunting lizard-dogs.

Their howls rose into the night. Deceptively distant.

A pair of jaws snapped shut on her damaged leg. Jace screamed again, louder that time, and plowed headfirst into the ground. The egg squirted from her arms. It shimmered like a driftwood fire on the dark woodland floor. A lizard-dog pounced on it, scooped it up in its mouth, and took off. The one who had bitten her dashed off, too, uninterested in a grubby alien sputtering on a mouthful of dirt.

"Aw, sh –" Jace swallowed the rest of her curse along with some bits of leaf mold. She rolled out of her backpack's straps and fumbled inside it for the small deck of Ephemeral Cards Isis had gifted to her. She couldn't use many, but the fact that she could use any at all was going to keep her alive.

Except . . . she couldn't read their faces in the darkness, and the lizard-dogs were getting away. She pulled what she thought was the Iski Card from the deck and held it up with one hand. With the other, she used a small kitchen knife and stabbed it. It wasn't like she could use any of the real weapons Isis had eagerly tried to saddle her with, the bows and crossbows, slings and staves, daggers, swords, maces, morning stars, pikes, halberds, and countless other unrecognizable things . . . the room and its shelves had gone on and on like one of those super-secret government filing warehouses in the movies. She could cook. She chose a knife.

The Ephemeral Card didn't seem to mind her humble choice, either. However, what exploded out of it wasn't the expected, small, mostly harmless shadow spirit. An indigo-skinned imp oozed over the knife, encompassing handle and blade, and opened eyes that glowed like white flame. It was kind of cute, with its overlarge head and childlike body, pointed ears, tiny bat wings, and clothes that swirled like smoke around slender limbs.

When it grinned, it revealed a row of knife-bladed teeth.

Jace's mouth dried out. That wasn't Iski.

* * *

_**A/N: **More slight changes, for those of you who have already read this far: Iskia has become Anhell (because I had forgotten about the Card naming conventions, Undi and Zini and Tini being the lowest-level water, fire, and metal cards, so now Iski is the lowest-level shadow Card)._

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**. You're the reason I keep writing! Thank you!_

_As always, please leave a review before you go._

_Cheers!_

_Anne_


	8. Stage Three, part two

Stay calm. Don't panic.

Jace forced herself to swallow. What had Iris told her? She had to name it, or the Ephemeral Card would turn against its summoner and fight for control of her magic. The last thing she wanted was an imp getting its knifey little teeth in her skull.

_Drop it!_ her mind screamed at her, freaking out like a mouse clenched in a fist. It kept showing her the image of a claw delicately slicing out a chunk of the brain and bringing it to grinning, moist lips. _DROP IT!_

Her hands convulsed, making the imp lose its balance; it slowly turned and faced her, crouched on all fours like a deranged cat, talons digging into her palms. Its mouth split wide. Its eyes sparkled like hungry Swarovski crystals.

Jace shivered, sternly telling her imagination to shut the hell up so she could remember what she'd been told. A name, for chrissakes, that wasn't so hard. This one's name was . . . Air-something. Greek, she thought. A word of darkness and shadows. Air . . . no, Er. Er-ah. Er-eh? Oh, yeah!

"Erebos!" she said, half triumphant and half about to pitch the thing as hard as she could so she could scrub her tingling palms on her soft black leggings, a gift from the nightmares at the palace.

The imp giggled. It blinked its large, white, jewel-faceted eyes at her, as trusting and adorable as a child ready to play a game.

Well, she had a game. One she was going to win.

"Get that egg back," she told the Card spirit.

Erebos flowed obediently off her hands, its movements somewhere between flying and warping. Jace hitched her bag over her shoulder and pounded after it. Fallen needle-fan leaves puffed up under her boots unseen, crackling softly as they landed. Shadows upon shadows, the imp warped along with a faint glitter so dark that her eyes felt like glass marbles trying to keep it in view. Somehow, she did, though she gritted her teeth against the ache in her leg. Without that egg, she may very well die here.

She didn't want to die now any more than she had before the accident.

Jace stumbled, chillingly sure that the next step she had been about to take wasn't the one she actually did take. Erebos must have pulled her along in its warping wake, because a lizard-dog, the one with its crocodile jaw stuffed full luminescent egg, loomed up right in front of her. That wasn't possible, not with how fast it ran and how slowly she hobbled – yet it was there, long spine bending for the next bound, flexible, rat-like tail extended, short dragonish ears flat to the ridged skull.

It never made the bound. Erebos, more smoke than shadows, struck like a bolt of black lightning, straight toward the earth. The lizard-dog crumpled without a whimper.

A second dog darted in. It scooped up the egg.

The anti-lightning struck. This dog, too, collapsed like a pile of Tinker Toys.

Three more lizard-dogs succumbed to Erebos's warping, stabbing strikes. Jace hobbled closer, wincing in real agony because of her leg, which refused to bend properly at the hip and knee. She picked up the egg, trying but failing not to notice how her little helper crawled over to one of the animal corpses. It reached out, dug around a bit, and brought a choice morsel to its lips.

"You're a spirit," Jace told it sternly. "You don't need to eat, so stop that."

She didn't know if the not needing to eat thing was true, but Erebos smiled at her with knife-bladed teeth. Then it stuck a thumb in its mouth and began to suck like a toddler.

"Stop it! That's even worse!"

The gentle night passed on, unconcerned with the grisly scene. Jace made a face that made Erebos grin around its thumb. A strange sort of affection surged through her, and she grinned back at it. She was supposed to recall the spirit now, bind it back into its Card form. Erebos looked so happy, though, blinking its jeweled eyes at the star-whorls in the sky, stretching its bat wings, twitching its pointed ears, sniffing the breeze, that she hesitated. Besides, she wasn't sure _how_ to recall it. That lesson hadn't stuck as easily as the calling part had; it had seemed more important, somehow, to bring an Ephemeral Card to her defense than whatever happened after. She could figure it out, but it would take time.

"Stay," she said to it experimentally, pointing at the ground. Erebos sucked serenely on its thumb. Jace shrugged and left it alone so she could study the egg in her arms.

She couldn't find any evidence of mauling, though the shell seemed thinner than before. Its occupant rolled, seeking, she hoped, a weak spot. Jace ran her fingers over the shell's bumpy texture, following the movement within. Excitement and nervousness leaped in her stomach.

"It's all right," she crooned, and, as though in response, the shell's aurora began to pulse. "You can come out now."

"Not just yet," a rough voice called from the trees.

Jace wanted to smack herself. She'd forgotten about the hunters. She hurriedly backpedaled toward Erebos and only stopped when her boot stepped on something that almost caused her to roll her ankle – a dog's lifeless leg. She winced but held her ground.

The hunter emerged from star-cast shadows, his face featureless in the darkness. Gloved hands clenched a crossbow. Two more hunters appeared, similarly armed. All three cursed her when they caught sight of their precious lizard-dogs, dead in a pile behind her.

One of them, too angry for words, raised his crossbow and pulled the trigger.

Jace didn't have time to choke on her scream before Erebos hissed, flowing upward, eyes as cold as chips of ice. The bolt struck it clean through the heart.

With a shriek, Erebos vanished in a puff of purple smoke. Jace stared at the spot of empty night, shaken by the suddenness, the completeness, of it. Erebos was dead. Killed by a human hunter with a spelled weapon, she was sure of that.

Sadness crashed over her, guilt following close behind. Jace had grown to like her cute little helper in the last few minutes. Now that Erebos was gone, the night seemed very lonely indeed, the shadows far less friendly than before. It may have been a common shadow-type Ephemeral Card, but it had been hers, had been given life by her, had been asked to win a fight that she couldn't even take part in. Why hadn't she recalled it to its Card form when she had the chance?

"Put the egg down, nightmare," the hunter growled.

Jace hugged the egg so hard she was sure the thing inside could hear her heart pounding.

"S'matter?" another hunter barked. "Forget how to talk, filthy nightmare?"

Jace opened her mouth but couldn't think of a thing to say, and the third hunter flinched. Actually flinched, as though she'd thrown a ginormous water balloon at his face.

What was going on? Three big men, armed to the teeth, had surrounded one crippled woman in the gloom. She blinked at the shiny tip of the bolt pointed at her forehead. There's the magic, her mind said calmly. An arrowhead spelled by a rogue elemancer against the rules of that big, corrupt academy-thing that controlled just who was allowed to summon Ephemeral Cards, according to Isis. The one who had made the whole world of Ephemeros fear and hate aliens like her, none of whom came here on purpose, none of whom could go home. That spell was how the hunters had killed Erebos.

_Now they're going to kill you after they hunted you and sicced their dogs on you, and they think _you're_ the nightmare?_

She remembered the hillside, the ditch, the hallucinations. Those monsters, the mutations. They hadn't been real. She'd been scared, and confused, and sick, and it had been night, much like now. Did the dark in Ephemeros play tricks on all humans, alien or native? Did these men see a monster when they squinted at her through the dimness?

She hoped they couldn't see the big, crooked line of darkness that appeared in the luminescent eggshell.

_Come on, little one,_ she thought at it. _I could use your help right about now._

"Why do you want the egg?" she asked in a desperate bid for more time, her clear voice startling the three hunters. One, the youngest, she guessed, glanced uncertainly at his partners. His crossbow slowly drifted to the side, like a steering wheel under an inattentive driver's hands.

The one who had shot Erebos didn't relax. He stepped closer – unnecessarily, since he was going to shoot her, she noted sourly. Close range wasn't going to make her _more_ dead.

"Can't let any more of you monsters taking what's rightfully ours," he said gruffly.

"How is it yours?" she asked indignantly. "I found it. You attacked me, remember?"

"It's ours!" he barked. "It belongs to the people of Ephemeros, not to a stinking beggar of an alien. You don't belong here. The egg doesn't belong to you. Put it down. Now."

"All right, fine," she said hastily. Was that a crack she heard? She spread her feet and awkwardly laid the egg on the ground, turning it so that its unblemished side pointed toward the hunters.

The young one snickered at her posture. She glared at him. "Your damn dog-thing bit me, you know. It hurt like hell," she said, laying the accusatory guilt on as thick as she could.

His gaze jumped from her to the lumps of darkness behind her, and his face darkened in fury. The crossbow in his hands snapped to attention. "Back away, nightmare! Now! Before I split your skull open!"

His buddies grunted approval. Ugh, dog-lovers! Not only did they think more highly of themselves than an alien, they probably thought more of their animals than their fellow humans. She rolled her eyes.

"Fine," she said again, proud of how her voice remained steady. Even aloof. The way it sounded when Rob went off on one of his rants about money or dirty dishes and she let her eyes glaze over while she imagined slapping him so hard, he'd start talking backward. She straightened with difficulty, then took a hitching step to the side. The next step came easier, and the next, though they hurt. Hurt was better than dead.

The hunters inched forward, jabbing their crossbows at her to make her retreat further. She did, only because any move she made for her Card deck would result in her lying very, very dead on the woodland floor.

Besides, the spirit inside the egg chose that moment to emerge.

The final crack sounded like a giant concrete slab shattering. Shadows streamed out in a torrent, extinguishing the Northern Lights effect, cloaking the stars. The bits of dead shell liquefied and joined the shadows, rushing away.

_Shadows gushed from the cracks in the road. They bubbled like lava in the dark, steaming like fresh tar._

It was the same. The same shadows. The ones that had swallowed her up and brought her to Ephemeros. She could almost smell the rain, the exhaust, the dirt, the metal. Her throat closed up. And then they came.

_As though in answer to her desperate plea, they coalesced out of the unnatural darkness. Pale things like ghosts with black pits for eyes. Purple things like smoke with starlight for eyes. Tall, slender, cloaked things with skin of ebony. Small lumpy things, each lump encasing a golf ball-sized gem that pulsed like an LED. The things smiled at her. As if in recognition. As if in welcome._

The creatures were back. In absolute blackness, they danced around her in what could only be described as joy. Because the one had been born. The one they called –

"Iskia!"

Jace shouted it, howled it, felt the name rumble up from her stomach and stretch her throat. She smelled a brief waft of ozone, the kind of scent that hissed out after an aerosol can reached the end of its life, and then nothing.

The Card spirit, naked but as gorgeously androgynous as a Korean fashion model, hovered in the eerily muted center of the celebrating, orbiting shadow elementals. It took in its surroundings with huge eyes and pointed ears, and then it curled in on itself, no larger than an American Girl but as slender as a Barbie, its expression so piteous and frightened that Jace's heart went out to it.

"Don't be scared," she blurted, forgetting for a moment that the ephemeral creature wasn't a child in the human sense.

Wide eyes filled with tears. The lower lip trembled. Iskia spoke in the same way Anhell had, in a sort of soundless whisper that Jace's brain interpreted as a voice.

_ Are you my master?_

* * *

_**A/N: **Wow, I had no idea I'd get stuck so badly in writing this scene! I'm still having fun with this story, though. I feel good about it! I really, really hope that you, Dear Reader, are enjoying it as well._

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**. I have been holding on to the notification of your last review for all this time. I kept looking at it, reminding myself to keep writing, to not give up, to have FUN. For that, I want to give you the biggest hug I can. Thanks so much for being here for me!_

_As always, please leave a review before you go!_

_Ever Yours,_

_Anne_


	9. Stage Three, part three

_**A/N1:** I realized after posting last week that I was rushing through too much. If you like, please go back to Ch: 7 and read the new ending before moving on with this, Ch: 8. Thanks!_

* * *

Jace forced herself to meet its gaze. Its eyes, dark and liquid as oil, held galaxies in their depths. "Not if you don't want me to be," she said honestly. She gestured at the shadowy welcoming committee. "You have a choice. You could stay here with your friends, I think."

The elementals clustered around the newborn, affectionately ruffling a whole headful of shaggy, unkempt hair. Iskia wiped tiny black fingers under its eyes and gave them a shy smile. Then it looked at Jace. The smile wavered and vanished.

_I'm afraid._

"Me, too," Jace said, again shooting for honesty. Although she couldn't hear or see them outside of the shadow-cocoon, she knew the hunters were still there. Waiting. Willing to murder. "I don't like the idea of a master. Being one. Having one. Not exactly my style. But if you like, I can be your friend."

She offered a hand to the floating spirit. "My name is Jacelynn."

Iskia soberly regarded both her face and her hand. A few more tears leaked out, but it wiped them away almost absentmindedly. Its voice sounded stronger. _Jacelynn?_

She grinned. "Call me Jace."

_Okay._ Iskia's black cherub's wings fluttered, and it floated closer. One tiny palm and five fingers grasped Jace's thumb. Solid. Strong. Gently, Jace folded her bigger fingers around them, trying not to engulf the doll-sized arm.

_Will you keep me safe, Jace?_ it asked her, its galaxy-gaze unnervingly direct.

Jace swallowed. She hadn't kept Erebos safe, had she? Could she do it? Could she promise, to herself and to this creature, that she wouldn't fail again? "I want to. I'll try."

A wave of resigned determination from the Card spirit passed between their joined hands left her feeling slightly dizzy.

_I will help you, then,_ Iskia said.

Like ink spreading in water, its childish form dissolved, and then the most intense caffeine rush of her life flooded Jace's body with tingling energy. Iskia's energy. He – for he was male, Jace was sure of that now – filled her organs and muscles from the inside, expanding them to fit. The ever-present ache in her leg eased, and then faded altogether. Jace grew taller and thinner. Her hair slipped out of its ponytail, the ash-blond waves flowing over her shoulders and into her eyes as inky blackness. In contrast, the skin of her larger, more male hands turned white as frost. Her clothes, now too small, melted into shadow and reformed; crisp slacks and a tunic-robe, a sash wrapped snugly around a narrow waist, all in shades of black, and as soft as rabbit fur.

A midnight star imploded inside her skull. Jace blinked several times to remove the filmy feeling coating them, and then she could _see._ They had bonded, the newborn Card spirit and the human, and the night no longer held any secrets from her.

Bourneyate Woodland glowed with non-light and life, shimmering in colors that Jace had only seen under a black light, and in others that she had never seen before. Her feet, bare and white and too big, dangled several inches off the ground. The air buffeted her, keeping her aloft the way bubbles in a hot tub could make her float, or so she guessed. Trying to wrap her head around this phenomenon, she raised her eyes.

And gasped. They were everywhere!

Misty purple ghosts waved shyly at her from around the glowstick trunks of trees. Ice-pale succubae danced together in the starlight, their eyes black as pits. Fuzzy, bat-like fairies swooped among the iridescent leaves, while heavier imps tried to catch them.

Lumps of solid shadows, the LED-like gems in their head-bumps flashing in warning, swarmed the three hunters. The humans couldn't see the elementals, but they could feel them. The solid shadows headbutted legs and hips, none too gently. The hunters cried out, their words unintelligible in the jumble of noise that suddenly rushed back into Jace's awareness, as they fought to keep their footing, tripping over and pushing each other.

_What now?_ Jace wondered, feeling kind of helpless as she watched the shadows herd the hunters into a tight, frightened, and confused knot. She nearly screamed aloud when her head answered in a voice that was not hers.

_What is your desire?_

Possible courses of action flashed across her mind. She couldn't tell if the ideas were hers or Iskia's, though she flinched from some of the bloodier visions: the dismemberment, the maiming, the death. When she flinched, what sounded like several crows flapped their wings loudly behind her, uneasy and restless.

_No,_ she thought at the spirit borrowing her headspace, physically closing her eyes and turning her head as if that could stop the disturbing images from blooming across her mind's eye. _I don't want to hurt them. I just want to get rid of them._

More ideas strobed by, less gruesome. Jace mentally caught one like snatching a paper airplane out of the air. She studied it. She smiled.

Iskia studied the idea, too. He radiated approval somewhere in the back of her head. His thought brushed against her eardrums from the wrong side. My power is yours. Take it.

The shadow elementals abruptly released the harried hunters, as though to give Jace and Iskia room. Startled, the hunters regained their balances, boots digging into the dirt, gloved hands clenching around the handles of wicked-looking hunting knives, the crossbows long gone, probably stolen by playful imps.

One of the men gawped at Jace, who crossed her arms haughtily and hovered like a dark avenging angel, or so she imagined. "There she is!" he shouted.

"Monster!"

_"Get her!"_

All three rushed her at once.

Jace pointed a finger at them.

The idea was a simple one. One that had saved her life not too long ago. Iskia's power welled up and traveled down her finger. Beneath the grinding boots of the three hunters, a black hole yawned open. All three men tumbled into it, yelling. The black hole zipped shut with a satisfied sound and an exhalation of rich dirt, though the ground seemed undamaged.

Not too far away, Jace heard the hunters reappear, still yelling, and then three distinct _plop!_s. A brief burst of cold water rained down. Spluttering and coughing, kicking and splashing, drowned everything else out for a moment. Then the normal, peaceful background music of nature took over once again.

_Maybe that lake will help them cool their heads,_ she thought at her new friend. _It's so dark here in the woodland, they'll never find us without their lizard-dogs._

Iskia giggled.

Pleased with the fact that her leg no longer pained her, Jace put her arms over her head, pointed her toes, and stretched muscles stiff with tension. Her wings rustled, sounding like several crows disturbed from a dinner of cold smashed fries on the street, but it felt so good to loosen them –

Shocked, Jace dropped to the ground. Pebbles and broken twigs scraped her bare feet, and she almost fell right on her butt. _Wings?_

She grabbed one, touched the stiff feathers, watched rainbows of non-light glimmer off the blacker-than-black barbs. She could feel her hands on the wing as though it were another arm, and feel the joints complain when she bent it too far. _We have wings?_

_Of course,_ Iskia said, sounding smug. He had been busy rummaging through her memories, assimilating her vast organic database of metaphors and interests. _Every dark avenging angel needs a set. Tell me, Jace. Would you like to fly?_

..::~*~::..

Isis crossed her arms, holding her elbows in her hands, feeling a little smug herself.

**Night, Palatium Somnia . . . **

In the crystal ball, the awakened Sorceress of Shadows swooped and sailed through the nighttime clouds on broad, black, plush wings. Isis could hear her laughter over the rustling of the feathers and whistling of the wind.

Awakenings often ended badly. Anyone could bond with a powerful Ephemeral Card, granted they were present when it hatched, though it was a proven fact that aliens, with all their diversity and capacity to dream, met with better success. Isis had known that hunters would show up, seeking this egg. She had not known if the alien Jace would survive the encounter. Now that she had, and had gained the complete confidence of the notoriously shy Iskia Card, all that remained was to wait for her to tire and return home, turn her into a faithful nightmare, and use her to gain control of the Elementis Achaici.

Never before had all seven Card Masters awakened at the same time. Fire, Water, Wood, Earth, Metal, Shadow, and Light. A couple here and there, usually, arrived in Ephemeros, but their lives tended to be short because of the prevailing and incorrect belief that to become a Card Master one only needed to take the previous Master's deck, which no Master would relinquish without a fight. Thanks to Khonsu's tireless efforts in the lands of the dreamers, a true convergence was about to take place.

A great time of chaos was coming, the third in Ephemeros's long but static history, and Isis was going to be there to see it. She smiled and inhaled slowly, reveling in the thought.

"It sounds like your little pet was successful," Sati said in her characteristically monotonous way. "Are you going to fetch her?"

"No. She will make her way home when she is ready. She is completely dependent on us. She trusts me implicitly." Isis turned from the crystal to watch her friend approach.

Hands folded behind her back, Sati glanced around the viewing chamber, deserted but for Isis and the iron viewing flower. Her long robes fit like a sheath, her belt jingled with each step, the golden embalming tools she wore clashing against one another. She flicked her head, shaking back chin-length cornsilk hair. The sharp antelope horns of her flat, gilded mask rose, making her seem taller, though the petite nightmare woman barely reached Isis's shoulder when she came to a halt. The thick leather strap buckled with gold around her slim throat looked tight enough to choke, but she spoke with serene detachment. "Where is Khonsu?"

"Who cares?" Isis asked. She returned her attention to the crystal and the alien. The one she'd gambled on. And now that the gamble had paid off, Khonsu could go right ahead and suck on his own –

"I care," Sati said, still monotone. "I need to speak to him. About Aker's daughter."

Isis twitched her shoulders, shrugging away from the sensation that someone had grabbed her with big, sweaty hands. Aker's daughter, Esna. Isis didn't want to think about the girl. She had enough problems to deal with without _that._ "I am not Khonsu's keeper."

"It was not an unreasonable assumption that you would know his movements, Isis. There are still two Card Masters somewhere out there. After the Sorceress of Metal debacle, we must ensure the aliens complete their awakenings under our jurisdiction."

Isis propped her fist on her hip. Everything Sati said tended to sound like an accusation, even when it wasn't. Besides, she – Isis – _was_ second in control of the nightmares. It had been that way ever since Queen Bailalee had gone into hiding and Khonsu had put this plan into action to entice her back to her rightful place as ruler of all Ephemeros, he the king at her side.

Isis sighed. "You're right, of course, Sati."

Isis held out her hand as though testing a frying pan for heat. The crystal ball responded immediately. The images inside blurred away from the flying alien girl and rolled through the misty reaches of the worlds, searching for their ambitious leader.

The mists solidified and the images slowed. The crystal's depths opened upon a narrow dirt alley between high stone walls.

Dressed in a very strange outfit indeed, Khonsu strode through the alley. To Isis, he appeared to have donned a pair of black silk pajamas meant to flatter a much more compact physique. A circular straw hat hid his tattoo and obscured his rugged, bearded features, though the light of a stone lantern on a low post picked out his wide, satisfied smile, crammed with his large, block-like teeth. The clench-jawed smile that suggested he was about to do something wicked.

Obviously sure of his destination, he stepped through a weed-strangled gate built of red and gold-painted wood and into a crowded courtyard. He looked neither right nor left as he marched across the middle, though he dragged stares after him like a trolling fishing line.

Sati flicked her hair out of her eyes again with a faint jingle of her ornamented spaulders. "Do the aliens truly not recognize him for what he is?"

"They never do," Isis said dismissively. She tasted bile, sour at the back of her mouth. _I didn't. _

Feet shod in the low black slippers and white stockings that everyone in the courtyard seemed to wear, Khonsu ascended the three shallow steps leading up to a towering pagoda at one end of the courtyard. He spoke briefly with a man standing guard outside, and then, when the man bowed and opened the door, strode in. The long black braid swinging down his back looked real enough that the guard shut the door behind Khonsu without hesitation and resumed his watch, hands obscured by long loose sleeves, tilted dark eyes trained for trouble in the crowded courtyard.

The crystal ball trailed Khonsu through several corridors and stairways, carrying Isis and Sati higher in the tower. He stopped and spoke with many people, men and women dressed in silk, smoking long pipes that puffed blue smoke, using sticks to eat a glistening feast, sipping white spirits from small glasses. He bent to bring his lips closer to the ears of the players around low tables checkered with white and green game tiles. Golden coins flourished everywhere, in glittering heaps on the game tables, peeping out of silk drawstring bags, passing over counters and through grates in exchange for game tiles or palmed paper packets. Sensual music, played upon stringed instruments and flutes, twined through the lantern-light and the blue smoke.

Isis gestured. The crystal ball brought Khonsu's insidious voice to them.

"The book," he whispered under cover of the music, again and again. "The Book of Secrets, guarded by the Chin family. In its pages are inscribed the great hidden truths of how to achieve victory in warfare."

He leaned closer until his lips brushed the shells of ears beneath gleaming black hair. _"You_ could get the book. _You_ could hold absolute power. _Kill Chin Shao-chen."_

Then he straightened, bypassing the pipes, the feast, and the alcohol, and picked a new target. Everywhere he went, everywhere he whispered, at least one of the listening humans began to smile.

Wide, satisfied smiles. Smiles that suggested they were about to do something _wicked._

* * *

_**A/N2: **All right, I'm feeling pretty good about how things are coming together and evolving! Happy Saturday, Dear Readers, and thank you so much for visiting me. Fun fact: I named Jace after a friend of mine, Jacely. Author's privelege!_

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, **Moratorium19** (twice!), and **Darwin**. YOU GUYS. You have made my days so much brighter. I can't thank you enough._

_Yours with brownies,_

_Anne_


	10. Stage Four, part one

_Thock!_

**Noon, off the Azure Dragon Road . . .**

The sound of a rock hitting a skull echoed around trees crowned with blue-green leaves, _ock! ck! k!_ A few birds, unrecognizable except as ragged brown blobs, took flight, squawking. Keon-hee shaded her eyes against the sun as she watched them go, feeling that same little knot of homesickness in her middle that had plagued her since the day she'd woken up in Evidd's shop – why couldn't these birds be gulls or terns, graceful as the curl of a wave and white as stars, crying out to guide haenyeo lost at sea back home?

The darkling seas of Hangsang Bam flowed under a green and midnight sky, the phytoplankton in the waves glowing a deep pink under the light of the three mint-green moons. It was always warm in the darkling seas, always full of light and color without the need for a harsh sun. All her life, Keon-hee had known there was a massive heart beating beneath her sandals, within the giant tortoise who carried her home island on its back through violet water, whose hide was crusted with gems and precious metals. All her life, she had lived under trees that swayed as though underwater, slept on moss that was so deep she couldn't find the tortoiseshell underneath, worked and ate and played with plants and insects that produced golden starlight of their own, and breathed in the cleansing scents of flowers and salt and rain. All her life, she'd known nothing but gentleness and love.

But she wasn't allowed to talk about that. No one, Asher assured her, least of all him, cared about her home. No one cared that the hard, dead earth of Ephemeros could not love its people the way Namsaeng-i loved the haenyeo. No one seemed to notice how much their land smelled – not of flowers, but of death, and decay, and cold dirt. No one was going to help her get back home. No one cared that she was lost, that her family and friends were surely worried sick about her. These people, the natives, cared only for Ephemeros. They hated aliens like her. No pity. No sympathy. No assistance.

Then her stomach rumbled, reminding her why she and Asher had left the highway for the wilderness in the first place. The only thing that Sang-eo could not keep was food – and they had eaten the last of their rations last night.

A footstep crunched behind her. "What did I tell you?" Asher asked. He brandished his sling and mimed shooting an imaginary target. "We don't need to beg our meals off farmwives." – A suggestion she'd thought good enough but that he couldn't sneer at any harder. – "Sounds like I got us something good."

"I'll go check!" Excitedly, Keon-hee chased after the fading echoes, hugging Sang-eo close to her hip to keep him safe, pushing underbrush aside, and occasionally shaking pebbles out of her sandals. She'd known Asher would come through for them. He may have been cynical and hard to get close to, but he was great at just about anything. She never feared for herself, not when Asher was near.

Except . . .

Keon-hee found the rock, bloodied at one end. She bent close to the ground, following the droplets through the dirt, until . . .

She gazed down at their meal, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple.

"Hey," Asher called. He strode through the trees as though he owned them, causing panic to sing through Keon-hee's body like an electric shock. "Did you find me a rabbit for lunch?"

Oh, Hananim, what was she going to say? She turned to him and tried to smile. The truth? Yeah! Honesty was the best policy, after all.

"Well," she said, hoping against hope he wasn't going to blow another gasket. Or that she wasn't going to burst out laughing. "I found _something._ And it _looks_ like a rabbit. But I don't think we can eat it."

Asher gave her the most Asher-ish grimace of disgust she'd seen yet, which bared the length of one of his fangs and screwed up his eyes so that he resembled a hungover pirate. Keon-hee repressed a giggle. He elbowed his way closer. Peered into the brush. Stopped dead.

Keon-hee imagined steam pouring out of his pointed ears.

It _did_ look like a rabbit. Sprawled on the ground, covered in pale gray fur, two long and velvety ears limp and crooked in the sparse grass, eyes lashed in gray and pinched shut.

It also looked like a girl, taller than Keon-hee, dressed in a pretty, full-sleeved, layered white robe and a pink sash tied into a huge bow, one lacquered black clog abandoned in the bushes, delicate hands curled like dying flowers, half her furry gray face coated in scarlet blood.

..::~*~::..

"I am sorry," the rabbit-girl said in a gentle accent, pressing the heel of her hand to her head, "I . . . I can't remember anything."

All thought of lunch had fled at the sight of the huge lump rising in their victim's hair, soft gray like clouds at dawn and elaborately coiffed with golden pins. Keon-hee stared down at her lap, guilt pressing her head low. She couldn't bring herself to look at Asher, though she could feel his discomfort like a dark, thundery cloud crackling against her back. She couldn't bring herself to look at the rabbit-girl, either, who just seemed sweetly confused and a little dazed.

Miss Rabbit sat in a puddle of her robes, one shapely gray leg showing. Her eyes, all pink iris and dilated red pupil, filled with tears. "I don't know my name . . . I don't know why I'm here or how I got here."

After a moment of thinking, and intensely uncomfortable silence on Keon-hee's part, Miss Rabbit's nose twitched. "Oh, wait! I remember the nightmares. Did you save me from them? I fell. I must have . . . hit my head."

Keon-hee couldn't stop the slightly hysterical giggle that exploded from her mouth.

"Hahaha! Hit your head! That's funny!" she babbled so loudly that every bird vacated the area, yelling at her.

Asher's brown fist swung out, catching her in the ear.

"Ouch!" she cried. He was right. This was no time to lose her cool. Miss Rabbit was looking back and forth between them with no small alarm. Keon-hee, with an Undi's help, had cleaned her up before she awoke, but Miss Rabbit seemed terrified of Asher, who had done nothing to set her at ease. Earnestly, Keon-hee leaned closer to her to catch her attention. "Can you give us a hint of who you are? A clue?"

"No, I can't," Miss Rabbit said, wilting like a flower in too much heat, but then she sat up again, surprise written all over her face. She dug around under her sash with slender fingers. "Wait, there's something here."

She drew out –

"An Ephemeral Card!" Asher lunged across the space between them, ignoring how Miss Rabbit recoiled, narrowing his eyes as he studied the Card.

Curious, Keon-hee bent further forward. She'd never seen a golden card like that, all shiny in the sunlight, like foil. The inverted, embossed E on the back rested upon two power dots.

"What else you got in there?" Asher asked gruffly, taking a sudden and real interest in their guest, as Keon-hee knew he would since an Ephemeral Card was involved.

Obligingly, Miss Rabbit began pulling stuff out of her long sleeves in a greater quantity than could have fit in there, not unlike Sang-eo, who was an ichawon shark – a creature whose insides did not match its outside. Every haenyeo, as a child who could not yet walk, swam into the darkling seas to befriend one. Keon-hee and Sang-eo would stay paired their whole lives.

Some of Miss Rabbit's things Keon-hee recognized, like a black domino mask, a used candle, a ball-peen hammer, a riding crop, and a pair of pliers, but Miss Rabbit also produced a whole bunch of other things Keon-hee didn't recognize, predominantly black leather and spikes – she gazed at the finished pile, bewildered and impressed.

"Wow!" she breathed. What on Namsaeng-i was all _that_ for? Were they weapons? Or perhaps used in some mystical rite?

Asher, in one of his lightning-quick moves, scooped the whole lot from under Sang-eo's disappointed snout and flung it as hard as he could into the trees. Keon-hee watched the strange assortment of things winking in the sun as they sailed away. She blinked at her partner, confused by his obvious consternation, all red-faced and breathing heavy.

"Well," Miss Rabbit demurely said, pressing her palm to her cheek, her eyes carefully trained elsewhere, "shock therapy isn't really working, is it?"

Asher, face ablaze, snorted, choked, and began coughing, and Keon-hee was seized by the distinct impression that she was missing out on something grown-up. Before she could ask, however, Asher straightened, scratched the back of his head as though trying to dislodge fleas, and gave a noisy sigh.

"Forget it," he said. "We're just wasting time."

"Huh? But, Asher –"

Miss Rabbit, slipping her Ephemeral Card back into her sash, suddenly winced. "Ah – wait!" she gasped. Her ears flicked as though straining to hear a sound the rest of them couldn't. "I'm getting . . . a faint image . . . golden light? A memory of something bathed in golden light!"

Keon-hee could have sworn she saw Asher's pointed ear grow ten times in size. She knew what that meant – there was something Asher wanted very much, something that had to do with golden light.

"Do you think she's an alien like us?" she asked him.

He rolled his eyes. "Of course, she is. You don't see regular rabbits walking around on two legs, do you? That Card of hers suggests she's a Card Master, too." He raised his voice. "Come along then, Bunny-lady. Let's go find that mysterious golden light of yours."

Keon-hee smiled. Success. All he'd needed was an opening to allow himself to be nice. She reached her hand to Miss Rabbit, still sitting on the ground.

"My name is Keon-hee. He's Asher. We'll be happy to help you."

"Thank you, Miss Keon-hee," Miss Rabbit said shyly. She accepted her hand and stood, brushing dirt off her robes, folding the edges over her legs to make a sort of sheath dress. Keon-hee then helped her hop over to the clog that had fallen off her bare gray foot.

Predictably, Asher was already walking back toward the Azure Dragon Road. If they didn't hurry, he might leave them behind. Keon-hee jogged after him while Miss Rabbit walked at a more sedate pace, her hands folded primly, her wooden clogs scraping through gravel.

Keon-hee caught up to him. "Hey, Asher, just give her those ginkgo pills you have!"

"No way! Those things cost me a fortune. Her memory will return. Just give it time."

"Boo." Keon-hee pouted into her fist. He never liked her ideas. She'd thought it was a good one, and an easy solution to boot. Asher took ginkgo pills because they were supposed to improve concentration, thus enabling him to completely control every Ephemeral Card he used in battle, but Keon-hee had read the label after fishing the bottle out of a thwarted Sang-eo and knew that they could improve memory recall, too. Oh, well. He must have something else in mind.

Asher glanced over his shoulder, and Miss Rabbit, looking like a cornered cottontail, eased her ears back defensively. All he said, however, was, "Is this the right road?"

She brightened at once. "Yes, yes! I remember that sign!"

Keon-hee squinted through the leaves of a tree to a metal pole, crooked and rusty. Two wooden arms pointed in two directions – one proclaimed the village of Jeoll was five _ml,_ or _mails,_ west, and the slightly larger town of Pochee eighteen ml northwest.

When Keon-hee and Asher glanced at her for confirmation, Miss Rabbit pointed at the sign for Pochee Town.

Keon-hee then exchanged a glance with Asher. Should they go? Or not? Helping Miss Rabbit could turn out to be a significant detour, after all – at the moment, Asher was headed for the northern city of Nipuru, to speak with someone there about . . . something . . . that he hadn't shared with her, but she didn't mind. How Keon-hee figured it, the best chance she had of finding her way home again was to travel as much as possible. Sitting still never solved anything.

Asher ran a hand through his spiky, dark red hair, though it fell right back over his right eye when he let go, and then shrugged his willingness to follow the lead. It didn't look all that dangerous or suspicious, just a dirt trail leading off into the peaceful, leafy shade of a summer day. Keon-hee sniffed, and she listened. Nothing but earthy smells and chattering birds. She nodded her willingness to go along.

Together, they led the way off the Azure Dragon Road and onto the less-traveled Pochee Road, Miss Rabbit shuffling along in their wake.

* * *

_**A/N: **Not sure that I have a lot to say this time around. I had fun creating my Miss Rabbit (I superimposed her over the original character that appeared because . . . well, In Dream World gave us too many humans and not enough really alien critters!)._

_Reviewer Thanks! **Darwin **(six times!), and __**St4r Hunter**__. It was so much fun seeing all those come in! Thanks, frens!_

_If you got this far, please leave a review on your way out! Love ya!_

_Anne_


	11. Stage Four, part two

The sun cruised along the sky, looking for chinks in the tree cover so it could stab Keon-hee in the eyes. She still wasn't used to keeping to its non-negotiable schedule the way Asher and the natives seemed to. The sun was such a demandy-pants, telling them when to sleep and when to eat. Haenyeo did these things when they were needed, not when it was _time._ She stuck her tongue out at it. So there!

Still, the daytime could be beautiful. The leaves shone in the sunlight in a prism of greens and blues that flickered with the wind. She could hear a stream nearby, and fish busily jumping for the insects that congregated over the surface of the water. Curious birds hopped through the branches overhead, bouncing chirpy, singsong observations about these strangers back and forth. A sun-colored butterfly wobbled past, and Keon-hee turned around to watch its progress, walking backward. She caught Miss Rabbit watching the butterfly, too, and the two of them shared a smile.

It felt like they were friends already, she and gentle Miss Rabbit. A burst of happiness flooded through Keon-hee, and she started humming a silly little fishing tune as Asher crashed through the foliage ahead, as single-minded as a tidal wave.

"Well," he grunted, sounding eight shades of irritated, "we're headed somewhere, but this sure isn't a road."

He slashed viciously at the underbrush with his saber, clearing the way like a narwhal through kelp.

"Ah," Miss Rabbit said anxiously. She covered her mouth with her furred fingers, her brow troubled. "Well . . ."

Keon-hee, who wasn't about to let Asher ruin her good mood, allowed herself a small giggle.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, just . . ." Keon-hee giggled again. "I feel like Alice!"

Asher stopped walking, his saber dangling from his hand, his face shiny with sweat. "Alice?" he asked, sounding like he meant, _What ridiculousness is this now?_

"Look." Sang-eo obligingly opened his mouth when he saw her hand coming, and with a little wriggling, managed to push what she wanted into it. A small, tattered book, a thing she had only ever seen on a pirate ship, made of paper and glue and printed with brightly-colored ink. _Alice in Wonderland._ It wasn't written in the weird, squiggly, inside-out alphabet that belonged to Ephemeros – it looked more like pirate writing than anything else, which Captain Pye had taught her the summer she worked on his ship. The book had obviously been written for children, for Keon-hee had managed to read it to herself over several nights of study. She opened it to the center, where her favorite picture spread over two pages.

"There's this girl named Alice," she explained, pointing the character's startlingly yellow hair and puffy blue dress out to Asher while Miss Rabbit poked, fascinated, at an abnormally shy and blushing Sang-eo, "and she follows a white rabbit into a strange world."

Asher's expression told her what he thought of the way she had squandered their hard-earned money. "Where did you get this?" he demanded.

"That bookshop you took me to in Bushan," she said, surprised he hadn't known that. "I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. You spent _hours_ in there –"

"Why are you wasting your time with silly human nonsense like that?" he stampeded over her furiously. "I said you could come along, but I didn't say you could act like a tourist!"

Keon-hee bit her lip, dropping her eyes to the colorful, chaotic picture of Wonderland. The White Rabbit. The Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts. She brushed the pages lightly and sadly with her fingertips. She wasn't _acting like a tourist,_ whatever that was. She'd bought the book as a gift for Eun-Jung. She'd promised to bring something home for her, after all – of course, she'd meant something from a shop in Anasika Port, not a whole new land.

She was going to go home, wasn't she?

Miss Rabbit, after noticing the glitter of tears threatening, glared accusingly at Asher, the first spark of real emotion she'd displayed.

Asher made the face that Keon-hee associated with swallowing a spoonful of poi; she'd never liked poi. "All right, you can keep the stupid book. Just . . . come on. We're wasting daylight." He whirled, whacking a path through the bushes.

No, they couldn't possibly waste daylight, Keon-hee thought with a roll of her eyes. She wiped the tears away. What did these people think would happen, that the sun would shoot down from the sky and spank their bottoms if they disobeyed? They were so _weird._

She clasped the book, her precious present for Eun-Jung, to her chest. They were weird, but they made such wonderful things.

Miss Rabbit crept a little closer now that Asher had lost interest. "A rabbit?" she gently urged.

All of Keon-hee's enthusiasm flooded back, warming her cheeks. "Yeah, a white rabbit!" she said. She took a few steps forward, holding the book so Miss Rabbit could see it. "Alice falls right into a rabbit hole and –"

And her words balled up and got stuck in her throat when the earth dropped away from her sandal. The book flew from her hand. She tipped right into a yawning chasm, previously disguised by undergrowth. Arms flailing, she rushed toward a carpet of wooden spikes.

A line of fire and steel across her chest brought her up short before the spikes could fill her full of more holes. Her mouth, wide open, strained against the ball of words so hard her throat hurt.

"I gotcha!" Asher said. He hauled her out of the hole – with his saber – that Sang-eo had clamped in his teeth. The ichawon's shoulder strap had saved her, thanks to Asher and Sang-eo's quick thinking and excellent reflexes.

Keon-hee collapsed onto the grass, gagging and gasping until the lump in her throat broke free. Miss Rabbit was there, too, looking like she'd lost all the strength in her legs.

"Here," she said shakily, offering the book that she must have caught when it went flying out of Keon-hee's hand. A delighted smile broke across her face when Sang-eo shook off the shock of his heroic deed and swallowed the book whole and undamaged.

Asher waited until Keon-hee's breathing calmed, and then he began to walk away. "I can figure out the rest of the story," he said.

"It's not _like_ that!" Keon-hee shouted, shooting to her feet.

But it kind of was. From that point on, the forest seemed determined to prevent them from reaching Pochee Town.

Asher stepped on a trigger hidden in the grass, which sent a row of pikes lancing upward, close enough to give him a shave.

"What?" he said in a half-whisper, eyeing the flint-headed pikes nestled against his face.

Keon-hee took an involuntary step back. She heard a click. Several morning stars swung heavily from the trees and almost took off Miss Rabbit's head.

"What's going on?" Keon-hee cried, throwing herself to the ground so fast she got grass-burn on her chin.

Miss Rabbit shrieked. She'd stumbled against a tree. Then – _click!_ She was dangling from her ankle ten feet above their heads, her robes around her ears, exposing a pair of lacy black panties and a puffball of a tail to the world.

Working together, Keon-hee and Asher managed to get her down, but when they tried to walk around the triggered traps – _click!_ A wagonful of cut logs sprang free and barreled toward them.

Nobody said a word. They took off running for their lives.

"I see! You remembered that sign!" Asher panted and snarled at the same time, causing Miss Rabbit to flinch apologetically. He hurdled a fallen tree that Keon-hee scrambled over. "You walked us into a trap!"

Miss Rabbit's eyes suddenly got two times bigger. "OH!" she said.

Behind them, the logs barreled closer, flattening everything in their path.

"Cliff!" Keon-hee screamed. She jumped over the edge. "Water!" she yelled helpfully behind her.

Trusting her without hesitation, Asher took the jump in a perfect dive, which made Keon-hee glow with pride.

"I remember the rest now!" Miss Rabbit hollered from the clifftop while the logs rushed up behind her, throwing clods of grass and bits of bark into a dirty cloud. She wrapped her robes around her legs and demurely hopped into space. "I turned the sign around to trick the guys chasing me!"

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE REMEMBERED THAT SOONER?" Asher bellowed.

One by one, they crashed into the waterfall-fed lake that Keon-hee had seen below. Icy, but safe. Keon-hee swam joyfully for the surface, reveling in the water as it hugged her from head to toe. A silk scarf. An arctic wind. A blanket of seaweed. _Home._

Water elementals danced around her head when it popped into the thunderous, ice-crystal mist of the waterfall. They swam with her and her friends as they made their difficult way toward shore – she asked the tiny lavender dolphins, politely, to help Asher and Miss Rabbit, who were both struggling with their waterlogged clothes. The dolphins obeyed, heaving the two of them onto the warm grass with giggles and nickers, far enough from the waterfall that they could hear each other speak over its constant roar.

Keon-hee pulled herself out with a sigh. "Well, that was fun," she said. She cradled Sang-eo in her lap, stroking his rough skin until he flapped his tail. He'd saved her life again. What a good shark.

After a few minutes, the water elementals kissed her forehead, brushed through her hair, and disappeared. She checked herself for injuries, and noticed Miss Rabbit doing the same.

Asher removed his denim jacket and gave it a quick shake, making it snap and showering down the nearby underbrush. He cast a sidelong glance at Miss Rabbit, whose ears drooped, dripping into her lap. She had lost her golden hairpins. "So, these guys were chasing you?" he prompted in an unexpectedly normal tone of voice.

"Yes," Miss Rabbit admitted. She squeezed the water out of her silvery-gray hair. "I can't remember very well, but –" she wrinkled her pert nose, and then she sneezed – "they were definitely trying to capture me."

Keon-hee crawled closer excitedly. "But what about the golden light?" she asked.

"I – I don't know."

Disappointed, Keon-hee sat back.

Asher, however, who seemed to have been thinking hard, came to a decision. "Look," he said to Miss Rabbit, his dark red hair hanging in his eyes, which were intensely blue, like hard kyanite crystals. "I've got to check something. I need you to take off your shirt."

_CRACK!_

Miss Rabbit's hand had flown out almost of its own accord. The sound of the slap echoed through the trees, much like the sound of the rock that had nearly brained her – _rack! ack! ck! _She fumed at Asher, quivering indignantly from ears to toes.

Keon-hee knew her eyes were huge. She put her fist to her lips, waiting for Asher to explode like a clogged black smoker.

The dragon-kin sat where he was, his head turned to the side so far it must have been hurting his neck, a hand-shaped red mark blooming on his tanned cheek. He turned his eyes heavenward and mildly said, "Fine. Keon-hee will look, not me."

He got up, dragging his soaked jacket with him, and leaned his forearm against a nearby tree with his back to them. Then he leaned his forehead into his arm. His wet, ratty white shirt clung to his body, showing off the sharp edge of a shoulder blade there, an angular sweep of muscle there. It bore matching rips near the shoulders, just like his jacket.

Keon-hee looked at Miss Rabbit. Miss Rabbit looked at Keon-hee.

Keon-hee shrugged. She had no idea what this was about.

"All right," Miss Rabbit said with a sigh. "I don't know what you're looking for."

"A tattoo," he said into the tree. "A character inside a wheel."

Looking as curious as Keon-hee felt, Miss Rabbit undid the top layers of her robes, shrugging them off her shoulders, holding the edges out of the way. She crossed her arms, keeping herself decent, which made her breasts swell up. Keon-hee bent forward – and saw it, just as Asher had described: a tattoo of a character, kind of like an inverted G, inside of a wheel of more brush-stroke characters, high on Miss Rabbit's left breast, where the gray fur grew the way fuzz did on a peach.

"It's there," she said, to Miss Rabbit's apparent surprise.

Keon-hee tilted her head, studying Miss Rabbit's expression. She wondered what that would be like, not knowing something about herself as permanent as a tattoo. What had happened to this gentle lady? Why would anyone want to capture her?

Miss Rabbit hurriedly dressed, folding the robes just so and retying her sash's giant bow, but Asher hadn't spoken or moved.

"Asher?"

"That's an Elementis Achaici tattoo," he said, still leaning against the tree. His empty hand curled into a fist. "I think I know who you are, Bunny-lady."

* * *

_**A/N: **This is why I wanted to write this story! It's so silly and FUN and wacky and just . . . FUN! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! *dances excitedly*_

_Also, I just realized that the idea of books, story or otherwise, are kinda central to this world (DUH). So Nimua now references "The Little Mermaid" directly, just as Keon-hee knows about "Alice in Wonderland."_

_Reviewer Thanks! **St4r Hunter**, **Darwin**, and **medicalkitten**. You guys are the absolute best and I luv you and thank you so much!_

_Cheers! Enjoy the day!_

_Anne_


	12. Stage Four, part three

Miss Rabbit's pink eyes widened. That kind of hope couldn't be faked, Keon-hee thought to herself. Miss Rabbit very much wanted to know who she was. So did Keon-hee. Also, what was this Mental Achoo thing, and why did it make Asher sound so grim?

Unfortunately, a gruff and ugly voice cut across the clearing where the water elementals had deposited them. "Your intuition is impressive, but now _we'll_ take care of the girl."

Keon-hee looked curiously at the intruders. There were about ten all told, so badly in need of baths that she could hear flies buzzing in the sudden lack of talking. The owner of the gruff voice, standing ahead of the others, was huge and bald, shirtless and grinning, a tiny round skull strung across his forehead with string, a cross-shaped scar carved across the bridge of his nose, long-muzzled skulls decorating one shoulder and a belt buckle, and, between his legs, an oddly prominent little cup-thing –

A rumbly snarl drew her attention further down. Two sinuous animals pushed around the huge man's muscled legs, which were encased in huge, knee-high boots and loose black trousers. The animals' golden eyes lifted, their gazes glued to Miss Rabbit. One animal licked its chops and shook both a dirty brown mane and a scaly, rattle-tipped tail; the other snarled around finger-thick, yellowed fangs and rustled its reddish, bat-like wings. Keon-hee couldn't stop staring at them. She'd never seen anything like them. Their broad paws dug at the ground, claws like payara teeth sliding in and out of the toes. Their whiskers quivered and curled outward. The animal on the left yowled, sending shivers running up Keon-hee's spine.

"You have been quite difficult to track down," the huge man said pleasantly to Miss Rabbit, "but the road ends here."

Miss Rabbit hugged herself, her eyes wide and frightened. She attempted to hide behind a sunflower stalk. "No!" she cried.

He snorted. "Considering the trouble you've caused, you're lucky I don't kill you on the spot."

His friends seemed to agree. Some nasty laughter rippled through their group, and more than one man smacked an ax or a club against his palm. At these sounds, the winged and furry animals began prowling around the huge man, snarling louder.

He smiled even wider than before. "Instead, I'll ask your cooper–"

A blast of fire ripped a trench through the dirt, barely missing the huge man. It struck five of the men behind him, sending them flying as though they'd been standing on a barrel keg and it had detonated.

"A – Asher?" Keon-hee gasped, scandalized that he hadn't even let the man finish his sentence.

"This journey was getting tedious," Asher said, speaking as pleasantly as the other man had. Zini's flames smoked along the edge of his saber's blade, ready for another attack. "I should thank you for the opportunity to kick your sorry ass."

Keon-hee covered her face with her hand. Not again. "Asher . . ."

Meanwhile, the huge, stinky man's expression suggested that someone had just slapped him awake with a spiny sea urchin. His snarling pets crouched low to the ground, their fur standing on end, their tails rattling. _"You're_ the Firelord?! I'd heard about you, but . . . Surely, you must want to know why we need the rabbit!"

"No," Asher said. "Not really. Zini, fire away!"

His glee translated to Zini's flames. A storm of fire cooked the air and wilted the trees and flowers, although, Keon-hee was sure, her partner was only interested in making these brigands dance. She had to stop this.

"Asher, wait!" she called, springing toward him.

She didn't hear a click. She felt it, though, something giving way under her heel. "Huh?"

Asher must have noticed the way she froze. He turned to look at her, the blaze from his saber painting his face as orange as his hair. She peered under her sandal.

Realization hit them both at the same time.

..::~*~::..

Screams echoed around the woods, sending every nondescript bird for miles flocking from the pillar of dirt, fire, grass, flowers, chimeras, people, and trees that spewed into the sky. A silver cat, large as a chimera but far more graceful, its eyes and its claws gleaming like mercury, lifted its nose and sniffed the wind. It rose up on all four metal legs. The wind played with its earrings and its long, soft fur.

A step sounded behind it. The voice of its master, a most powerful sorceress, caused it to duck its head, hoping for the touch of her small hand.

"What is it, Keloa?" she asked. She softly scratched the great head between the ears, and the metal-type Ephemeral Card began to purr mightily. "Strangers in the woods?"

The Sorceress of Metal made the strange, amused little sound that passed for a purr in her kind. Her hand moved to scratching Keloa's jaw, sending shivers of pleasure racing down its spine. "Do not worry," she said in her quiet voice. "I will keep the egg safe."

..::~*~::..

_A blue sky._

_Clear air._

_Friends._

_Do I smell tea?_

"Miss Rosemary!"

A riding crop crashed across her open book, coming from over her shoulder.

Rosemary sat up with a jolt, the sharp sound echoing in her ears. She did smell tea, but not fresh and hot, steaming from a silver tea service. It was the scent of bergamot lingering on the hands of her tutor, Miss Abegail Taylor. After a light, almost lighthearted, tap of the crop to the workbook – its pages creased now – the familiar lecture about Rosemary's lack of attention and focus began.

Rosemary sat straight in her chair to align the boning of her corset, her hands folded in her lap, her chin up, her eyes trained on the large, clear windows opposite her small desk. She knew better than to turn to face Miss Taylor. That riding crop of hers had found Rosemary's arms, her chest, her legs, and the parts of her neck hidden by her long, thick, blond curls before. Miss Taylor did not like to see defiance in Miss Rosemary. It was unseemly, she said. So Rosemary watched the smokestacks outside the mansion windows as they serenely puffed black smoke that smeared across what was, Rosemary assumed, a beautiful blue sky. She didn't know for sure. She'd never seen it. Only in books. Not nasty Physics and Engineering, or Philosophy and what passed for Art History, no – she'd seen it in picture books, like _Alice in Wonderland. _Books that Miss Taylor had deemed inappropriate for a young lady of Miss Rosemary's advanced age, even though she still dressed Rosemary in the ruffled pinafore of a child, affixing large, girlish bows in her hair, finishing her outfits with round-toed, patent-leather strap shoes instead of the ankle boots most young women wore.

She wished she had been born Alice Liddell instead of Rosemary Rossbach. She'd have friends, then – even strange ones were better than none.

Uh-oh. Miss Taylor must must have checked Rosemary's reflection in the windowpanes, and noticed her less-than-rapt expression. Miss Taylor did not like to see disobedience in Miss Rosemary, either. Even dogs had to show obedience.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Miss Taylor demanded. The crop slapped into her palm. "No daydreaming in class!"

Rosemary said nothing. She sat, compliant and obedient, waiting for her next instruction. She knew the riding crop was where the scent of dried bergamot was, knew how fast it could strike. Her hands tightened in the folds of her skirt, but she would not let her inner trembling show. She _wouldn't._

"Remember what happened last time you broke the rules?" Miss Taylor unexpectedly crooned. "Poor Elspeth."

At these words, Rosemary flinched. Elspeth. Her one true friend.

"That fire must have been so hot. It just . . ." Miss Taylor bit her bottom lip, her shiny, perfect, shockingly rose-red lip, and sucked in a sympathetic breath. "It ate her up, didn't it? First her hair, one curl at a time. And then her dress, that pretty dress you made all by yourself, Rosemary. It turned to dust, didn't it? And her face, her sweet little face – cracked!" Miss Taylor laughed. "All gone!"

_Elspeth!_ Rosemary mourned. She could no longer see the smokestacks. All she could see was her doll, lying in a small, blackened heap on the grate.

Miss Taylor leaned on the desk, tapping one long, polished, and pointed nail on the wood. Then, satisfied that Rosemary wasn't going to doze off again, she swept regally to the mantel, where photographs in gilt frames stood. In a different, controlled, prim governess voice, she said, "One day you will lead your family, Miss Rosemary, which is why you must complete your finishing school. Understood?"

"Yes, Miss Taylor," Rosemary whispered. Miss Taylor repeated those same words to her at least once a week. It was the whole reason that her father had hired a woman of such impressive pedigree, recommended by their peerage as the finest tutor to grace the city of Albion.

A timid knock at the sitting room door preceded the butler. He leaned into the room. "Excuse me, Miss Taylor, but Miss Rosemary has a caller."

Entirely discomposed, Miss Taylor slapped her palm with her riding crop again. "Harrison! I thought I made it clear: No interruptions during lessons!"

Harrison shot a desperate look at Rosemary that she pretended not to see; he knew his job better than she did. "But, Miss Taylor . . ."

Miss Taylor seemed to rethink her behavior. She wasn't a crone, which always surprised Rosemary. When Miss Taylor allowed herself to relax, she was actually quite pretty, even if her severe dark wool gowns, narrow wire-rimmed spectacles, and no-nonsense hairstyle didn't flatter her youthful face. Her foreign cosmetics made her pale skin look like a rose in bloom. Perhaps her good looks were responsible for all those praiseworthy recommendations from the rich fathers in the city. Rosemary didn't really care.

"Is this another of her boyfriends?" an aggravated Miss Taylor asked Harrison, who looked as though he had no idea what the right answer was supposed to be. Miss Taylor sighed.

"Filthy men," Miss Taylor said. Or at least, Rosemary thought she said. It had been quiet, like a curse, and Harrison hadn't reacted at all.

Rosemary stood, ready to follow the waiting Harrison to the drawing room, where her caller must be expecting her.

Miss Taylor swooped upon her and grabbed her arm in hard fingers. The smell of dry tea wafted into Rosemary's face.

"You must reject his advances cruelly and harshly, like I taught you," Miss Taylor whispered with unneeded urgency. "You're only fourteen. They want only one thing – the fortune of the Rossbachs. _Your_ fortune, Rosemary." Now Miss Taylor was the one trembling. Her nails pinched Rosemary through her sleeve. "Pigs. Dogs! Now, go dispose of him, but hurry!"

Rosemary walked over to Harrison. She knew that she looked like a little girl, but that she moved like a woman. Detached. Aloof. She didn't know who these men were, how they had heard of her. It wasn't possible they had caught sight of her on the street or in a shop – she was not allowed out of the mansion. Still, they came, seeking her hand, and she sent them away, as Miss Taylor instructed. She had learned months ago how not to feel sorry for them.

Harrison gave her a small bow, and she smiled faintly. Harrison was kind. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know that the riding crop had cut and bruised her fair skin, where no one would ever see its ugly work.

He opened the door for her, but Miss Taylor detained him as she always did, leaving Rosemary no choice but to make the doomed walk to the drawing room alone.

This time, the memory of her beloved Elspeth's destruction made her pause after the door was shut. Made her heart pick up the pace. Made her retrace her steps. Made her bend toward the keyhole.

"Tell me about our . . . guest," Miss Taylor said.

"An older gentleman, Miss," Harrison answered. "Very handsome, but older. He gave his name as Knightley. Isaiah Knightley."

"Wonderful!" Miss Taylor cried, laughing aloud. "Even the old, perverted dogs are coming out to sniff. It doesn't help that she's such a strange girl. I fear she has no hope of attracting a normal man. I mean, a girl her age still talking to her doll! This is what happens when parents are too self-absorbed."

Rosemary contemplated the doorknob for several moments, the brass escutcheon, the painted wood behind it. So, this was Miss Taylor's opinion of her. Not a surprise, really. Rosemary thought over each cruel phrase, turned each word over in her mind, and decided that . . .

She really didn't care.

She turned and walked down lush, carpeted hallways, across landings bordered by marble columns, through galleries of precious, priceless art. The Rossbachs were indeed rich. The richest family, the most powerful family, in all of Albion's gentry. And she, Rosemary, the only daughter of the aged and oft-absent Lord Markis, was heiress to it all.

A glint from a long line of windows caught her eye, prompting her to move closer and press her hand against the cold, hard glass. Albion spread out before her, a shining meadow of stone, metal, and glass. Smokestacks puffed, clockwork engines chugged, and drab citizens went wearily about their gray, ashy lives, unaware of the watcher from high. Trees and flowers could not hope to flourish in this world of metal and coal. Stone. Cobbles. Ash. This was her kingdom.

Rosemary tried, but she felt nothing for this place, these people. Gray, smoky, and dead. That was her world.

Blue sky.

Clear air.

Tea with friends.

It was all _meaningless._

"Is something troubling you, my lady?"

Rosemary whipped around, half of a mind to flee right back down the hallway – but Miss Taylor was that way, and this was just an older gentleman in a charcoal-gray suit, crimson necktie, and black silk top hat that shaded the top half of his face. Handsome, but older, and smiling at her.

Rosemary narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, ready to scold him for taking the liberty of wandering around her house without her permission, but what came out was a strangled cry of mingled grief and joy.

_"Elspeth!"_

Without thinking, without considering the propriety of the situation, the impossibility presented, Rosemary darted up to the older gentleman and snatched the curly-haired doll right out of his white-gloved hands. Then she collapsed to her knees, hugging Elspeth tightly to her bosom, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Elspeth!" she sobbed, over and over, rubbing her cheek into the doll's wig, squeezing the plush body beneath the plain schoolgirl dress. "Elspeth, it's you!"

Then she realized what she was saying. Rosemary got to her feet and held the doll at arm's length, her greedy eyes tracing every well-known and beloved feature. The blue eyes, fringed in black. The platinum hair, curled and waist-length. The delicate hands, the slender legs, the patent leather shoes.

For the first time since Miss Taylor had come into the mansion, tears welled up and spilled over Rosemary's cheeks, her lips and chin, and she felt that she could die from happiness. Never mind that Miss Taylor had thrown Elspeth in the fire. It was undone. It had never happened. It had been a dream – a nightmare – a wicked trick. Elspeth was here, and whole, and Rosemary's heart couldn't be any fuller.

"It _is_ you. Elspeth." Rosemary hugged her best friend close.

"So you like the doll I brought you?" the gentleman asked. "I am relieved."

Recalling herself, Rosemary turned wide, wet eyes on him, unsure of what to say. She couldn't see his eyes. Only his smile, full of block-like teeth.

He didn't seem to expect her to say anything at all. The gentleman knelt, patted Elspeth's head, touched the brim of his hat to Rosemary, and straightened to his full, considerable height.

"I must take my leave now," he said. "A pleasure, good lady."

Then, in a swirl of his ashy greatcoat, he was gone.

* * *

_**A/N: **Greetings and Salutations, Dear Readers! Thank you so much for visiting me!_

_So, I'm not sure that this update is clear, and I'm afraid that it may be a bit confusing. What do you think? Are you able to follow the narrative all right?_

_Reviewer Thanks! **Darwin **__and __**St4r Hunter**__. Thank you so much! Your reviews made me smile! *HUGS*_

_Yours,_

_Anne_


	13. Stage Four, part four

Strange as this gentleman caller had been, he stayed not one second in Rosemary's recollection past the door closing behind him. What did he matter? Elspeth filled her every thought. Almost delirious with happiness, Rosemary hurried to her room with Elspeth clasped in her arms. She flew down hallways and corridors, climbing high within the mansion to the little White Attic. A last small stair within a closet in the back corner of the many-years-unused nursery brought her, in complete and wondrous isolation, to her tiny bedchamber above. Miss Taylor had had her moved here when her private studies began, explaining to Rosemary's father that Rosemary would better concentrate where she could not be disturbed by the usual noise of the house.

Originally, Rosemary had resented this banishment from the spacious, comfortable Blue Room two floors below, but today – today, she considered it a blessing.

Rosemary placed Elspeth on her small white bed. Elspeth's head tipped to the side, giving her the look of a curious little girl. Humming to herself, Rosemary then dug around in a small trunk until she found a black ribbon – one she had worn in her hair for her mother's funeral three years before. Still humming, she tied the ribbon in Elspeth's hair, pulling the top and sides back just the way Miss Taylor insisted Rosemary wear hers. The black ribbon set off Elspeth's platinum curls perfectly, and matched her plain schoolgirl dress.

Rosemary sank to her knees on the worsted rug. She propped her elbows on the bed, beaming at her best friend. Elspeth, her blue eyes thick-lashed and shiny, smiled back with a tiny mouth as pink as a rosebud. Elspeth was always smiling. It was one of the reasons Rosemary loved her so much.

"Do you like it?" Rosemary asked. Elspeth smiled and smiled. Rosemary's heart swelled like a hot air balloon. "It's pretty, huh, Elspeth?"

Elspeth smiled.

Rosemary tucked the stubborn curl that perpetually stuck out of Elspeth's fringe back where it was supposed to lie. She ran her fingertip over the bow in Elspeth's string necktie.

Then she picked her up and held her high, dancing around her tiny room with her. "Thank goodness you're back. We shall never be apart again!" she promised.

A book hit the floor behind Rosemary, followed by a stack of them. It sounded like a flock of birds striking the window.

Rosemary whipped around.

Miss Taylor stood in the doorway, her arms empty, her face as white as porcelain beneath the rouge and lipstick. Her spectacles sat crookedly on her nose. For just a moment, she looked as fragile as Elspeth.

Though her lips trembled violently, Miss Taylor managed to gasp, "That . . . that doll . . . how?!"

A knife twisted itself in Rosemary's heart. She snatched Elspeth to the spot of pain with both arms, ducked her head, and barreled past Miss Taylor to the landing. She leaped toward the stairs.

Miss Taylor's hand shot out. Her long fingers closed around Rosemary's arm.

Rosemary flew backward, her mouth open. She couldn't find her voice, not even when Miss Taylor sank her long nails in Elspeth's curls and pulled as hard as she could.

_Riiiiiip!_

Elspeth's head separated from Rosemary's grasp in a shower of porcelain shards and balls of stuffing from her soft body. The head struck the floorboards, tangling the orderly curls, and a crack disfigured Elspeth's sweet smile. One of her blue eyes stuck in a half-shut position. The other glittered toward a corner of the room, where gable met wall.

"You . . . you _brat!"_ Miss Taylor raged. Spit flew from her shiny lips to strike Rosemary's cheek. She flushed an alarming scarlet, so that even the whites of her eyes looked bloodshot. "You show that toy more love than you've ever shown me! Perhaps I should _make_ you love my teaching, then!"

Rosemary couldn't close her eyes or her mouth. Her scream – _Elspeth!_ – bounced around inside her skull with no way out. Miss Taylor slammed her bedchamber door shut, and she turned the brass key in the lock.

They were alone in the White Attic, in a wing of the mansion where no servant was permitted to go.

Over the next few minutes, Rosemary thought she must have shrunken – like Alice – to the size of a doll. Miss Taylor, in a whirlwind of strength and speed, tore Rosemary out of her clothes the way she had torn Elspeth's head from her body. Rosemary's attempts to fend her off seemed feeble and uncoordinated by comparison, which frightened her. Then Miss Taylor forced Rosemary into something entirely new, a gauzy sort of underwear, sheer and lace-trimmed, and a see-through nightgown that barely covered her bottom or her breasts.

At last, Miss Taylor flung Rosemary onto her back on her bed so hard the springs creaked. When Rosemary could catch her breath, she lifted her eyes to her tutor, who looked as though she belonged in the asylum down by the river. Rosemary had seen the inmates once, bound together by a chain around their ankles, their rough gowns white and stained, their faces blank and tortured, trying to keep their wits together long enough to pick trash out of the gutter in the street below the mansion. Miss Taylor's hair had escaped its unflattering bun and hung in shining golden strands over her shoulders. Though she was smiling, she was drooling.

Like one of those dogs she deplored so much.

"I believed that I could win your trust," Miss Taylor said, standing over Rosemary's prone form, her eyes unfocused, "but now I say to hell with that! Now I'll teach you my way."

Rosemary, though very aware of her indecent state of undress and the chilliness of her chamber, wasn't aware of making a single sound, neither a peep nor a whimper, but Miss Taylor began giggling uncontrollably.

"That's right, cry," she cackled. "Cry as loud as you want! There's no one here to hear you. Your dear father entrusted you entirely into my care while he travels the world, amassing more fortune than you could spend in a lifetime!"

Miss Taylor took a step forward. Rosemary tried to crawl backward, but she leaned on her hair and brought herself up short like a ground-hitched horse.

"No one knows you like I do," Miss Taylor crooned. She ran a fingernail up the inside of Rosemary's thigh, making Rosemary's tummy tighten – though, not as much as the scissors in Miss Taylor's other hand, snip-snip-snipping at the air did. "No one loves you like I love you, child. I will teach you love."

The tip of the scissors lifted the hem of the filmy nightdress. Miss Taylor squeezed, and the lace parted cleanly. Rosemary couldn't breathe.

"You never wanted a boyfriend anyway, did you?" asked Miss Taylor in a sympathetic voice. "No more did I."

Her hands reached down, the scissors gleaming.

"I knew it."

Miss Taylor stared at Rosemary. Rosemary stared at Miss Taylor.

Who had spoken? The voice was familiar to Rosemary, but not.

Was it Mother –?

No, don't be stupid. Mother was dead.

Then who –?

"You're just like the others," Elspeth's head said from the floor. Her eye was still jammed, but the other one, glittering like a living eye, rolled toward Miss Taylor. "You just want Rosemary's body."

Rosemary sat up so fast the thin strap of her nightdress fell off her shoulder, sending a wave of hot, sick shame rolling through her. She'd never liked removing her corset, not since the development of her breasts had demanded the wearing of one. She preferred to be laced up so tightly that they all but vanished because those same breasts wobbled around so much and made her uncomfortable.

As uncomfortable as the way Miss Taylor's stare seemed glued to them. "Enough tricks, you little witch!" her tutor shrieked. She apparently believed Rosemary had spoken, not Elspeth.

Too late, Rosemary realized that Miss Taylor had drawn back her hand for a slap, and she flinched, dreading the pain sure to follow.

Behind Miss Taylor, behind the swiftly descending hand, Elspeth's mutilated body rose off the floor where it must have fallen. From her slender limbs, gleaming silver chains exploded. Rattling and clinking, the chains hurled themselves into loops that ensnared her tutor's arms, arresting the slapping hand, cutting into Miss Taylor's wrists so that the scissors dropped from nerveless fingers, encircling her throat. Miss Taylor tried to scream, but she could only manage a phlegmy grunt. She could not free herself from the chains no matter how frantically she struggled.

Rosemary pushed her disheveled hair out of her eyes, watching in awe as the chains tightened around Miss Taylor's long neck. The glistening trail of drool thickened like a translucent slug down Miss Taylor's chin. Her reddened eyes bulged. Rosemary was not bothered by these details.

She saw Elspeth, and nothing else.

The head leisurely levitated, righted itself, and then floated closer, bobbing as though still attached to a body with legs. Elspeth's face, once fixed in a sweet-tempered smile, scowled, as animated as flesh.

"You are a festering human sore, motivated only by evil, oozing only unnatural desires!" Elspeth's head told the quaking, suffocating Miss Taylor in the voice that was like, and not like, Rosemary's dead mother's. The expression was one of exasperation. "Because of you, the awakening has come too soon! He is going to be very upset with me."

The doll rolled her eyes, blinking with a faint clicking sound until her jammed eye returned to normal. "If this is how you show your love, through pain and fear and unconsent, then it is clear that you care only for your own dark desires. So now I will be the teacher and – " the head floated over to the body and reattached with a twist of the platinum curls, and then the smiling mouth giggled and finished, "you the learner!"

The chains retracted, zipping and rattling back into Elspeth's body. The doll smacked the riding crop into her porcelain palm while tears poured down Miss Taylor's face.

When Elspeth raised the crop, Rosemary hid her head under her pillows. She covered her ears with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, and held her breath, so that she may not see what sort of lesson Elspeth was teaching Miss Taylor. Frantically, she forced herself to think of something else, something entirely different, something safe, like Alice's adventures in Wonderland.

Some time later, when Rosemary had gotten to the point in the story when Alice tricked the Mad Hatter with a riddle about a writing desk, she heard her name, softly called.

"Rose? Rose!"

Timidly, she emerged from under her pillow, her hair in her face. Elspeth was sitting with her legs folded beneath her next to Rosemary on the bed, and she was whole again. No crack. No chains. Just her sweet, rosebud smile and Rosemary's black ribbon in her hair.

"Elspeth," Rosemary said slowly. She wasn't afraid, but she was curious. Just like Alice. "Why are you talking?"

"We have spoken many times."

"We have," Rosemary agreed soberly. "You have never answered me before."

The doll's expression saddened. "This life is one of torment. It's all right that you don't remember."

Rosemary said nothing, and chose not to see the heap sprawled on her worsted rug. What Elspeth said was true, but it was the only life she had. It was no use to dream otherwise.

Elspeth crawled closer and put her cold porcelain hand on Rosemary's. "I know a place where we can go, where you can have all the things you crave," she said earnestly. "If you want, I can take you there. Do you wish to go, Rose?"

Rosemary had no reason to suspect Elspeth of a falsehood. Elspeth was the only one who had never lied to her. She nodded.

Elspeth clapped her hands. Rosemary's bedchamber door swung open. Instead of the cramped landing, it led to a tiny room walled in sea-blue velvet and caged in gilt. Curiosity burning, Rosemary stepped inside, her bare feet sticking to the expensive linoleum floor. Elspeth came with her, her leather shoes tapping gaily.

Though Rosemary expected something to happen once she was inside, nothing did.

"Push the button," Elspeth said.

"Button?" Rosemary scouted around until she discovered a brass plate next to the door, a row of buttons just waiting to be pushed. Next to that, a brass lever seemed to cry out for her to pull it. She lifted her finger, and then hesitated. "Which one?"

"What does your heart tell you?"

Her heart? What was that supposed to mean? Rosemary squinted at the clear lucite buttons. Instead of floor numbers, each one held a letter inside. Rosemary gave each one due consideration, feeling safe and protected in the blue velvet box. She could take her time.

There. That one. The one that looked like an inverted "E." Rosemary pushed the button and it lit up in a gay pink color that delighted her. Of its own accord, the gilt grille closed and a bell somewhere overhead dinged brightly. Then she grasped the lever, released the brake, and sent the elevator sinking into what she assumed was the mansion's upper staircase. It sank, and sank, and lights ran up the walls at regular intervals. Elspeth kept smiling.

Rosemary counted the lights. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The elevator slowed, its clockwork mechanism clicking and humming, and then it stopped. The cage doors opened. Elspeth looked up at Rosemary and gestured for her to take the first step.

Self-consciousness paralyzed Rosemary; Miss Taylor's see-through nightgown was hardly appropriate attire for setting out on a journey, but when she moved to cover herself, she discovered that she was dressed in her favorite cherry-red day gown, the one with the puffed sleeves and cream-colored accents, after all. She stepped out of the elevator without fear. Her patent leather strap shoes carried her gracefully over the uneven ground in a way ankle boots, with their high heels, never could have.

She gasped in utter delight. "Wonderland!"

The sky was blue, so big that it hurt her eyes. It touched upon lavender mountain peaks far in the distance. Fleecy, pure-white clouds danced upon the wind. The air was clear, so fresh that the sunlight sparkled on green growing things and thousands of flowers. Instead of the chugging of machinery and clockwork, Rosemary could hear nothing but the songs of small birds. Behind her, the elevator closed its grille and sank into the ground. She could not find a trace of it afterward.

Nearby, a small, attractively-worked metal table perched in the middle of a grassy field. A silver tea service gleamed upon a cloth, cups and saucers and silverware and napkins and finger bowls set for two. The scent of hot brewed tea wafted on the bracing air.

Elspeth clambered up one of the delicate metal chairs and sat on a silver damask cushion. "Welcome to Ephemeros, Rose," she said.

"Ephemeros? Not Wonderland?" Rosemary asked her, a little disappointed.

Elspeth winked at her, downright mischievous, the way Rosemary had often imagined her. "It has many names. Shall we have tea with our friends?"

Out of the shrubbery, creatures emerged. Something fluffy and catlike, its fur coat shining platinum like Elspeth's hair, twined around Rosemary's ankles, purring. A translucent, jelly-like blob the size and shape of a tennis ball, iron filings swimming in its depths, bounced between the sugar bowl and creamer, too excited to sit still. A large metal construct, a bit like a chess pawn but more friendly and otter-faced, puffed its way over the grass. Steam billowed from two exhaust ports on its head, and it draped a tea towel over its forearm. Its paint gleamed like sunlight on water, prim and white except for its black painted necktie and gold painted shirtfront buttons. It pulled the other chair out for her expectantly.

Rosemary smiled. Without a second thought for poor Miss Taylor or her absent father, she allowed the construct to push her chair in for her and waited for it to serve her and Elspeth some of the fragrant tea.

..::~*~::..

"Mmm," Keon-hee groaned. Another nightmare, but too real to simply be a dream. Just like the one she'd had several times in a row, where she'd been that girl who had fallen from a cliff and been swallowed by shadows. This time, she'd been a girl whose doll had come to life.

"My head," she whimpered. Small wet hands patted her cheeks and her forehead, bringing her around and soothing the ache in her head. Her vision cleared, and three water-elementals threw their arms in the air as though cheering. "Thanks, little Undis," she said weakly. They grinned at her, waved bye-bye, and vanished.

Keon-hee waited patiently for her brain to assume its normal shape. What had happened? Where was she? Where were the others? Asher and Miss Rabbit and those Card hunters?

She tried to move, but when she almost fell out of a tree, she realized just how high up the explosion must have sent her.

Keon-hee stared down at the ground, fighting off unwelcome dizziness. Miss Rabbit was amazing! That had been her most effective trap yet! How she'd put it together was an absolute mystery!

Keon-hee shook her head, slipping a little farther out of her perch. She didn't have time to be impressed! The others might need her!

So, her fanny hanging between two branches, she tried to put together a new plan.

That was when she realized that she was alone. The strap she usually wore across her chest was missing.

"Sang-eo?"

Sang-eo, being a shark, couldn't make a sound. Not with his throat, anyway. A frantic thumping and sudden shower of torn leaves in her face made Keon-hee look up. Sang-eo, wedged much like she was, flapped his tail into the tree's trunk as hard as he could. His visible eye looked as woebegone as those of a small, fluffy creature soaked by rain.

"Sang-eo!" Unthinking, Keon-hee reached for him. One of the branches broke under her weight. It crashed onto the ground in a hurricane of bark and twigs. Dangling from her knees, she spat out leaves and the hem of her shirt. She was pretty sure bits of wood dust had gone up her nose. This world was so unfriendly! "Hold on! I'm coming."

Sending a prayer of thanks to Hananim, goddess of tides, that Asher wasn't around to see this, Keon-hee wriggled her way upright and then began to scale the few branches separating her from her friend. The tree wasn't very nice, all scratchy and rigid, but its branches offered great hand- and toeholds. She had just about climbed high enough to grab Sang-eo's jaw-ring when a glitter of golden light near her shoulder caught her eye.

She peered through the leaves, pushing them aside, to find a nest big enough for a pelican. And in the nest –

"What is this?" she asked no one in particular, reaching out to touch it. "It looks like an egg."

A large egg, alone in the nest. Its shell gleamed like gold, smooth and flawless. Keon-hee's reverent fingers were an inch away from the shell when someone asked her, "Are you after the egg, too?"

Keon-hee started and almost fell out of the tree again. She saved herself by hugging a branch to her chin. "Oh! I didn't know you were there!"

"You" was a girl close to her age, sitting in a nearby tree on a swing made of a slab of metal and two long chains. Her hair, which was a bright white-yellow, framed her face and shoulders in a riot of shiny curls. A red ribbon was tied in a huge bow on top of her head. Her dress, cherry-red, set off the ruby brooch at her throat, clasped on the high, frilly collar of the dress. The pleated, cream-colored skirt covered her legs down to the ankle. Her feet were small, her stockings white, her shoes black. Keon-hee, hair mussed, face scratched, holding herself in place by her armpits and one leg, immediately felt like an urchin broiling in the sun just by looking at this pretty, overdressed girl.

The girl's eyes were silver, reflective like metal, her lashes thick and blonde. She was not smiling.

A movement at her side, and then a smaller head popped up. A doll?

Keon-hee's eyes widened. _The_ doll! Wearing her fussy gray dress and the black ribbon in her platinum hair!

Then, this girl must be –!

The doll pointed at her. "If you touch that without Rosemary's permission, I will squash you like a bug," she said.

* * *

_**A/N: **Hello, friends! I hope you're all having a good week. :3 A bit of a longer update for you. I just couldn't find a good place to break this off!_

_Reviewer Thanks! __**St4r Hunter**__! My rockstar!_

_Oh, I guess I do just want to say one thing and make it clear that Elspeth does not call Miss Taylor's attraction to Rosemary a "dark desire," she's condemning the fact that Miss Taylor is trying to rape a child._

_And on that rather grim thought - I do hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway._

_~ Anne_


End file.
